


Shadow and Storm

by zaphodsgirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dragons, F/F, Found Family, Growing Up, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Spells & Enchantments, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death, deancastropefest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-01-25 17:12:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18578920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zaphodsgirl/pseuds/zaphodsgirl
Summary: One night, a mysterious visitor appears in young Prince Dean's bedroom, and he suddenly finds himself transported to an abandoned replica of his home in an unknown land. He learns quickly that the borders are finite, and none may leave without incurring the wrath of the guardian: a dragon the people call Storm.Left with no choice, Dean adapts to life as the others have, tending to the animals and working the land to survive. As he grows up, the life he knew as a prince seems more and more distant, until a new person arrives that he remembers from his childhood. Shaken by this arrival, Dean’s desire to escape returns anew, and he discovers more than he wanted to know about the Shadowlands and its occupants -- especially about the mysterious guardian of the castle, Castiel.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In the beginning, this story was going to be a comedy/fantasy AU that was inspired by [this comic.](http://portsherry.com/comic/helping-the-princess/)
> 
> However, because I am me, it quickly went to all the dark and sad places. Shocker.
> 
> Absolutely invaluable assistance was rendered, as always, by the lovely [superhoney](https://archiveofourown.org/users/superhoney). Both my writing and my life are better with her in it. If you're looking for more great fic, please check out her rec blog with the adorable [teacass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fushigi/pseuds/teacass)  
> here: [DeanCas Fix](https://deancasfix.tumblr.com/)
> 
> The support of the Thuper Thecret Chat Room is the best, as always. Found family is the good kind of family. (I hope Janet still talks to me after this.) Special shout out to the Scrib Sibs for listening to me bitch about this story for *looks at watchless wrist* at least 8 months, probably.
> 
> Lastly, my heart and soul belong to [whichstiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel), who fell into my barely concealed summary traps (a little dragon here, a little dragon there, dragon dragon DRAGON PICK ME) during claims -- and then just casually said "I was thinking I'd do a pop-up book, what do you think?" like it was NOTHING and ever since then I've just been sitting around with my mouth agape. Seriously, my tongue has dried out and I'm really quite parched. I am convinced she is not actually a real creature, but a mystical being comprised of good grace and glitter.
> 
> Please, please, PLEASE, click [HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18653134%E2%80%9C%20rel=) and shower her art with love, because you have no idea how much work went into this, and she learned on the fly for the challenge. (I'm not kidding, she bought a book and everything.) On top of her incredible paper craft, she bound it into an actual book and then had to photograph it all and I just... *sigh*
> 
> It's fine if this is not the story for you, but please take a moment to appreciate the art, which can also be found [here](https://whichstiel.tumblr.com/post/184571868985/i-made-this-art-for-the-2019-deancas-tropefest).
> 
> Lastly, I'm not great with social media but you can find me on Twitter and Pillowfort. Allegedly. YMMV.

_Once, long ago, the seven kingdoms were constantly at war with one another, though no one could remember when it began, or even why. For many years neighbor attacked neighbor, stealing provisions from those already hungry, burning the land they could not control, terrorizing the people who weren’t their own. It seemed as though life would always be so, for each leader refused to negotiate peace, lest they be the first to seem weak._

_That was before the rains came._

_They began sparsely, with several days of near mist that did little but make the air more humid, and eventually became a drizzle. More clouds rolled in and the drops gained weight, turning into steady showers. At first it seemed a blessing, for much of the battle-ravaged land was cleansed by the rains, and each farmer prayed that their meager crops would flourish from the attention._

_After two weeks, it became an inconvenience. The overly saturated land made it difficult to travel short distances, even on foot. Crops once thirsty for rain were now drowning at their roots, and even animals that normally enjoyed the mud became listless in the midst of it._

_By the end of the first moon cycle it had become a tragedy, but still the rains came, and would for another moon still._

_There was one realm that fared better than the rest during the Great Deluge, as it would later be called. It lay in the stony mountains once populated by dragons, overtaken by people when they had all gone. The new inhabitants had learned to farm the rocky soil, to use the overabundance of stone for dwellings, and had carved a castle into the very mountainside. Its geography meant that it suffered less than those drowning in mud in the flatlands and the valley. Many in those realms had died, and those that yet hadn’t were well on their way from starvation or sickness. It would have been the perfect time for a conquerer to destroy his enemies and seize their lands, declaring himself ruler by force._

_The current mountain king was no such ruler. He was just a young man, a newly minted regent and the last surviving member of the royal family. First his mother had taken ill, wracked by fever brought on by constant damp, bedridden for weeks before she succumbed. His sister had been caught in a mudslide that nearly killed him as well, her body never found, strange rumours of her death spreading like wildfire. Finally his father had been consumed by guilt, both from their loss and his failure to prevent the deaths of so many of his own people, leaving his son alone to rule after he’d succumbed to his own sorrow._

_The young king moved among the people he was now responsible for, merchants and peasants and nobles alike all sheltered within the castle, and listened to the song of their grief with a heavy heart._

_He had seen enough of death._

_Their food stores were plentiful, sheltered high from the floods decimating the other kingdoms. The castle hewn from the mountain itself was sturdy and vast, capable of housing many more people. The king, not even old enough to have the first blush of a beard, gathered all his surviving people together in the great hall to make his proposal. He wanted the way forward to be a path they decided together, and though everyone balked at first they eventually came to an accord, though many of them thought it would come to nothing in the end._

_Once the ground began to dry and the threat of mudslides had passed, runners were sent to all six neighboring kingdoms with a message: the mountain realm offered itself as a place of succor for any who could make the journey, at the request of the king and his people._

_They asked for nothing in return, for goodwill given at a price is no good will at all._

_Survivors from near and far came in droves, most of them on foot, all of them hungry and distraught. All were welcome, their needs addressed as best as possible. Slowly, people found something they had long ago forgotten how to feel._

_The rulers of the surrounding kingdoms were so humbled by this mercy that they swore fealty to its young king, uniting under his rule in a land they named Concordia._

*******

“Dean, your sibling is kicking,” his mother says to him one day as she rests on a chaise in the solar, one hand on her round belly, gesturing him over with the other. Dean is four years old in this moment, and though he doesn’t know it at the time, this is the only image he’ll retain of his mother in the years to come: her long blonde hair glistening in a shaft of sunlight, the soft timbre of her voice as she maneuvers his hand into place, the warmth of her taut skin beneath his palm. Their eyes meet as he waits, and he doesn’t yet know that before he even reaches manhood a day will come when he can no longer remember what color hers were. Right now there’s just the two of them with no idea of what’s to come, and she smiles when he feels a bump against his hand and squeals with excitement. 

“I felt it!” 

“Yes, you did! They’re strong for a little one. You will have your hands full when they arrive, if you’re going to be a good big brother. This amulet you wear,” she says, lifting the carved pendant he wears on a small chain around his neck, “is a sign of your rank in our family. As the eldest of the next generation of Winchesters, it will be your job to protect them all from the shadow, and the storm.”

“What are those?”

His mother gives him a soft look, stroking his hair with her free hand and cupping his chin.

“It’s just a saying from an old wives’ tale.”

“What’s an old wives?”

Mary throws back her head to laugh, and Dean grins adoringly up at her, glad of her reaction even if he doesn’t know what it’s for.

“You know how the Matrons sometimes tell stories? Well, sometimes they tell them as a cautionary tale, warnings for people to take care, and sometimes the entire story can be summed up with a single line. That one just means that you’ll have to look out for your new sibling, to protect them from things to come. Do you think you can do that, Dean?”

He nods his head so rapidly it’s practically a blur, and Mary’s laugh again rings out into the corridors. 

It’s only a few weeks later that she goes into labor, and it’s the first time Dean has ever seen his father anxious. King John is always so steadfast and calm, but he paces the corridor outside his bedroom for hours, wincing every time Mary shouts with effort. Dean watches from his favorite hiding place, a niche in the wall behind a tapestry of the First King. It’s one of many hiding places he’s discovered throughout the castle with Cook’s daughter Celeste, who usually keeps her flame red hair tucked into a boys’ cap so as not to give herself away. Dean peers at his father’s frantic pacing through a convenient tear in the bottom of the woven fabric, his eye unnoticed in the scene of people flooding into Concordia at the end of the Great Deluge.

John finally tires and leans against the stone wall as though it is the only thing holding him up, and Dean creeps out of his spot to wrap his arms around his father’s leg. He holds as tightly as he can, feeling strong fingers caressing his hair, and when a different cry comes from the other side of the door the taut muscles beneath Dean’s cheek relax. There’s commotion and excited chatter, and Dean looks up at his father with a question on his face. 

“Come on,” John says, sweeping Dean into his arms. “All will be well now, and your mother has worked very hard. Let’s go to the kitchens and see if Cook has something delicious for her to eat, and by the time we get back she should be ready to, ah, receive us.”

Dean spots Celeste hiding under the trestle table as they enter the large room, and she smiles when he notices her but no one else does. He loses track of time while Cook fusses, refusing to let them lift a finger as she bustles about the vast kitchen, darting from pantry to larder to cooler so she can furnish a large wooden tray with a feast fit for her queen. When she’s finally finished she hands it to the king as though he’s a servant, bidding him to make hast and not dally. He bows to her as much as the heavy tray allows, and she giggles as she hands Dean a ceramic jug of cool, refreshing cider. He holds it reverently in both hands as he follows his father back through the castle.

The day is turning twilight when they enter the room, and Mary smiles to see them from where she sits upright in the bed on clean linens, wearing her best night dress as Matron fusses with the pillows behind her. She eyes the tray in John’s hands with interest.

“I did not think I could love you more, sir, than in this moment. Is there bread?”

“Bread and butter and meat and cheese for the queen of my heart.” 

“Father, why are you speaking like that?”

“Like what, young prince?” John says with a grin as he places the tray on the large bed next to Mary and opens a napkin with a flourish.

“Like the Fool.”

His parents both giggle, but neither answer his question as John leans in to kiss his wife on the cheek and peer at the bundle in her arms.

“What have we, lady?”

“Another boy,” she whispers. “And if you hold him so that I may eat, I’ll be happy to give you another next year.”

“Dean, bring that cider here so that your mother may have some refreshment,” John says as he takes the bundle from her arms. Dean watches as his father walks in slow circles around the room, whispering to the baby in his arms, a soft look on his face that Dean has only seen on rare occasions. 

“Would you like to hold him?” Mary asks Dean some time later, when she’s eaten her fill and Matron has taken her leave, and the food tray with her. Dean nods eagerly, vibrating with excitement. John sits him on the bed next to his mother, bolstering his little body with pillows for support, and Mary gently transfers the bundle into his arms. Dean looks down at the infant in wonder, at his sleeping pink face and his tiny balled fists, at the tuft of dark hair at his crown. 

“I promise I’ll take good care of you,” Dean vows in a whisper, and the baby flaps his arms, knocking against the amulet at Dean’s throat and making him laugh.

“Samuel,” Mary suggests, looking up at John, who nods and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Sam, for short.”

“So it shall be come the autumn,” John agrees, looking down at his eldest son gently cradling the infant brother that he will never know. 

*******

Each fall, after the orchards have been picked bare and the reapers have lain the fields barren before the coming frost, the people of all the realms of Concordia gather for a celebration in the castle bailey. Every year there is dancing and food and games, people frolicking in costume and half in their cups, toasting the bountiful harvest before they buckle down for the coming winter. 

But on the first day of the jubilee, before the jugglers and fire-breathers and bards take center stage, a naming ceremony is held for all the children born since the prior celebration. It is a somber event compared to the colorful carnival of the days that follow it, but it draws just as large a crowd as the best magician every year. 

Prince Dean doesn’t remember his own naming ceremony, of course, so he asks his mother about it as she nurses Sam one evening before the fire. Dean is watching the preparations in the bailey from his favorite perch by the window, fascinated to see structures being erected where nothing was before. 

“Your name means valley, because before I met your father my home was in Lawrence, in the valley below us now.”

“How come I’m not Lawrence?”

“Because Lawrence is a terrible name,” John says under his breath, and Mary glares at him until he winks at her.

“I wanted to pay tribute to the land of my birth and remember it always, without using a direct reference.”

“I only allowed it because it also means leader in one of the old tongues,” John grumbles from the desk where he sits, poring over documents. “I still think you should have let me call him Drake.”

“We are not naming our children after ancient legends and folktales,” Mary says without looking up, rocking Sam against her. “It’s bad luck.”

“You speak against the old tales yet still have a superstitious take on the matter, I’m not sure that bodes well, either.” 

“What’s bodes mean?”

“Nothing, sweetheart. Your father is just bitter that I chose your name, because I did all the work of birthing you, and such was my right.”

“I’m the king, I should have all the rights,” John mutters, but there’s no heat in his voice when he says it, and when Dean glances at him there’s a soft smile on his face as he watches Mary and Sam by the fire. 

“What’s Samuel mean?” Mary’s shoulders tense a little, but her husband notices even from across the room. 

“It was your grandfather’s name,” John answers, signing the parchment before him and setting it aside to dry. He turns his full attention to Dean, gesturing him over, then placing him on his knee. “Do you remember that he passed away in the winter?” Dean nods. “Well, sometimes when the people we love leave us, we give their names to our children, so that they’ll always be with us. So in two night’s time we’ll stand on the stage below and declare your brother’s name for all the people to hear, and it will be like your grandfather is still alive a little bit, and your mother can be with him again.”

Dean waits in eager anticipation for the naming ceremony after that. He’s never seen a ghost before, though he’s overheard Matron tell stories in the kitchen while he was hiding in the cupboard, dark tales about people who disappear without a trace.

He clings to his mother’s hand as they wait in line, the Master calling out each month in turn, and then announcing the new children’s names to the waiting crowd. It seems rather boring, but Dean thinks that none of the other babies were named after dead people, so things will definitely improve when it’s their turn.

He holds his breath when the Master turns to the crowd and shouts “Prince Samuel, of the House Winchester, the third of his line,” but no spirit appears, and Dean doesn’t know how to voice his disappointment. “May the gods protect him from the shadow and the storm.”

Dean forgets about ghosts for the remainder of the evening as he rides about on John’s shoulders for the festivities, marveling at the performers in their colorful costumes and rings of fire, enjoying sweets that his father procures from different vendors and hands up to him to try without regard for the transfer of syrup into his own hair. 

Later Dean realizes that he’s being carried in his father’s arms, dozing against his shoulder as they head back inside the castle. He wakes as John puts him on the floor, helping him to take off his jerkin. 

“Did I miss the ghost?” he yawns as his mother swaddles Sam for the night. 

“What ghost?” Mary asks as he climbs into bed still in his shirt and hose, and John tucks him in to the distant sounds of revelry from the bailey below as his mother places the sleeping baby gently into his cradle by the window.

“I thought that Grandfather would come when the Master called his name, so he could see Sam,” he finally admits in a whisper, and his mother and father give him a fond look that does nothing to quash his disappointment at not seeing an actual spirit. 

“Now where did you get that idea?” John says, ruffling his hair and making him giggle. 

“Probably from something out of your mouth,” Mary says teasingly, poking John in the shoulder before sitting on the bed next to Dean. “Just because you don’t see him doesn’t mean he isn’t there, love. In my heart I know he’s always with us.” She kisses him on the forehead for what will be the very last time, and John blows out the candle by the bed before they leave the room. 

Dean watches Mary pull the door closed, shutting out the torchlight from the corridor, then ponders what she means in the dark until his eyelids grow heavy and he can feel sleep pulling at him. He feels as though he’s only dozed off for a moment when he’s suddenly awake again, as though cold water has been splashed on him. He blinks a few times, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness in the room, and realizes there’s a figure squatting by Sam’s cradle. He freezes, trying to make out its features in the faint moonlight, wondering if this dark shape is what he’s been waiting for all night.

“Grandfather?” he asks, and the shadow unfolds itself, lengthens and solidifies as it stands. He doesn’t recognize the face that turns to him, and he’s too mystified to be afraid. As it reaches the side of the bed he can make out a woman with long dark hair in a gown of ebon velvet, littered with sparkling dots as though he’s staring into the night sky. They seem to swirl across the expanse of fabric as she comes closer, mesmerizing in their impossible dance, like something alive. The gown pools around her feet at the hem, and even the sleeves themselves are so long that they touch the floor. “Who are you?” 

“Well who wants to know?” she says lowly, her voice raising the hairs on the back of his neck despite its soothing tone. 

“I’m Prince Dean.”

“Oh, Prince, is it? I can see that.” She gestures to his throat, and he grasps at the amulet as he looks up at her curiously.

“Are you a ghost?” 

The lady before him smiles, and Dean relaxes a bit. “No, not a ghost, little one, though sometimes I feel as though I am.”

“Why?” 

The lady sits on the far edge of his bed, the fabric of her long sleeve pooling across the coverlet like a night sky. 

“You’re a curious little boy, aren’t you?”

“Mother and father say I am preconscience. What’s preconscience?”

“I think you mean _precocious._ It means you are very smart for your age.”

Dean nods solemnly. “Why are you in my room?”

“Well, it was very important that I see you, but I did not get a chance at the naming ceremony.”

“See me? How come?” Dean is secretly thrilled that this strange lady thinks he’s important, because ever since Sam’s birth no one seems to be interested in him anymore. 

“Something’s going to happen,” the Lady says, her eyes glazing over, as though she’s looking into a great distance before shaking her head. “I learned long ago that I can’t stop tragedy, though I try to rectify it, and sometimes I can even misdirect it.” Dean hears a noise and glances back at the door adjoining his parents’ room, trying to place it. It’s a soft, persistent sound, like when he falls asleep in front of the fireplace. His curiosity about his visitor is greater, though and he turns back to the Lady.

“What’s misdirect?”

“Oh, you know. When you’re paying attention to one thing, so you don’t notice that another thing is happening. Like magic.”

“Can you do magic?” he asks with excitement, and the Lady smiles.

“I can, actually. It’s how I got here from my...realm.”

“Where’s that? Is it far?”

“It is, yet it isn’t all at the same time.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Well, there are no roads to it, but I can send you there in the blink of an eye,” she says in a conspiratorial whisper. 

“Can you send me now?” Dean whispers back. 

“Is that what you want?” 

Don nods eagerly, excited at the prospect of travelling by magic. The lady hesitates for a moment, and Dean is afraid that she’ll say no, but she finally seems to make a decision. “Take hold of my sleeve,” she says. He curls his fist into the dark fabric, watching the pattern of stars swirl against his hand as the surface they inhabit changes shape. Suddenly the door adjoining his parents’ bedroom flies open, and Dean has just enough time to get a glimpse of Mary, her face a mask of terror, the room behind her engulfed in flames. 

He doesn’t know it then, but in the years to come he’ll often wake from dreams of this very moment, from his mother screaming his name before she vanishes from his sight.

*******

Dean is standing alone in a place he’s never seen before, wind buffeting his hair as he shivers, looking around him. There’s enough moonlight to illuminate the space he finds himself in, and he can see that he’s in a circular stone room much like his own, though the roof and much of the wall on one side have crumbled, exposing it to the elements. There is a large, dark mass in the center of the room, but nothing else that he can see.

His head feels foggy, and he tries to orient himself as he steps as close to the edge as he dares, peering down at the distant ground. There was a lady in his room, and then someone was screaming, and now he’s here. He looks around again, spotting a set of stairs going down along the remaining wall, just as they do in his own bedroom. He heads in that direction, hand trailing along the damp stones as he makes his way carefully to the bottom of the stairs in the dark. 

There’s a door at the bottom, slightly ajar, and he pushes it open with both hands. “Hello?” he calls out. This corridor, too, looks much like that of his own home even in the dark, though this place has no tapestries to warm its damp stones. “Is anyone here?” 

Slivers of moonlight filter through the loopholes to mark his passage, and he can see another door at the opposite end, much like the one he opened, with light flickering underneath. At home this would be the family solar, and even the door looks the same. The top of it comes to a point and looks to be of heavy wood, but after a moment of hesitation he pushes it open effortlessly. The room beyond is bathed in moonlight, its streaks of silver broken up by the crosspanes of the oriel window in the center of the far wall, flanked on each side by a balcony. The fireplace burns lowly to the right, and a large bed is to the left. 

“Hello?” Dean moves towards the far side of the room, and he steps out onto one of the balconies to survey the surroundings. Even in the bright moonlight he can’t see to the ground, nor can he see anything but forest in any direction, and his hands bunch into fists at his sides, willing himself not to be scared. 

“Who are you?” says a voice, and apparently Dean’s not as alone as he thought. His head whips toward the sound to find a strange young man with his back against the bed frame. Dean must have walked right past him in the low light of the room, for he sits in shadow. The stranger peers at him curiously, and Dean is too stunned to speak for a moment. “What is your name?”

“I’m Prince Dean.”

A strange look passes over the man’s face as he glances at the amulet around Dean’s neck, but then it’s gone. 

“Hello, Prince Dean. My name is Castiel.” Dean walks slowly back into the room where the man sits cross-legged on the floor, tilting his head like a bird as he examines Dean. “How did you get in here?”

“What is this place?” Dean asks, sinking to the floor across from Castiel. 

“My home,” the man says, looking out towards the balcony. “No one is supposed to come into the castle.”

“It looks a lot like my home, in Concordia. Do you know it?” Castiel looks at him curiously, leaning forward over his knees.

“You remember your home?”

“Of course I do! Tonight was the beginning of the harvest festival, and we had the naming ceremony for Sam, and then I ate blackberry tarts and pear turnovers before I went to bed, and then…then there was a lady. She said she came from a magic place, and then I was here. Only, I don’t know where _here_ is, or where the lady went. Have you seen her?”

“No, I’m sorry. I...I’ve not seen anyone else for some time.”

“Oh. Well, I need to find her so she can take me home, but she said this place was magic. It doesn’t look magic to me.” 

“Not all magic is visible. Sometimes it’s hiding in plain sight. Look,” Castiel says, and he holds one hand out towards a beam of moonlight. As the light touches his skin, his hand turns translucent, and Dean gasps in amazement. 

“How did you do that?”

“Magic.”

“Can you teach me?” 

“Ah,” Castiel says, pulling his hand back to his chest. “I’m afraid not. Magic is something that you’re born with. Like freckles.”

Dean pouts in disappointment, then studies the man before him. Castiel looks about the same age as a new knight, with dark hair and bright eyes, and though he seems somewhat strange Dean isn’t afraid of him. He finds himself yawning, suddenly, and tries to shake the sleep out of his mind.

“Come with me,” Castiel says. He stands and gestures for Dean to follow him out of the room. “I know a place where you can sleep tonight, and in the morning there will be people to take care of you.”

“What about the lady?” 

Castiel doesn’t answer this question, but Dean doesn’t think to ask again, plodding after his new acquaintance without complaint. He leads Dean down two flights of spiral stairs and into a dark corridor, and it feels as familiar to Dean as his own home except that this place has no life. No sconces are lit, no people guard the halls, and every room he peers into is empty. 

At the end of the corridor beside what Dean thinks of as the receiving room, they come to a blockade of large stones and broken wood beams, piled haphazardly on one another. He looks at Castiel in puzzlement, and the man crouches next to him. 

“No one is supposed to enter this part of the castle,” Castiel whispers to him with a wink. “But I bet a clever boy like you could squeeze through the space between those two beams.” He points, and sure enough Dean can make out a small opening at the bottom.

“Celeste and I have gotten into smaller places than that,” he says proudly, crouching down to wiggle through the space without another word. He has to crawl a few feet through, but he manages it without any problem, pulling himself out on the other side and standing up to brush dirt off his hose as he looks back at the barrier.

“Well done,” Castiel says from behind him, and Dean whips around in shock.

“How did you do that?” he says with wonder, and though Castiel smiles it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Magic.” He gestures for Dean to follow him until they finally reach a large room that Dean recognizes as the kitchen. This place, at least, has signs of life even if it’s not currently occupied by anyone. The fires have been banked for the night, the coals burning low, but it’s clear that this is a place that sees a lot of use. Castiel leads him to the far corner where there’s a cot and a pillow with a blanket folded upon it.

“Whose bed is this?” Dean asks sleepily. 

“Well, tonight it’s yours,” Castiel says, as Dean shakes out the blanket and curls up under it.

“Will you stay until I fall asleep?” he asks, thinking that it will be a long time before he can close his eyes, and he doesn’t want to be alone again. 

“Of course.” Castiel sinks to the floor by the cot, sitting cross-legged as he did on the balcony. “You don’t need to be afraid. Everything will be alright.”

“Who is the lady with the black robes? Is she your mother?” Castiel shakes his head.

“She is the mother of none. They only call her the Lady.”

“Is your family here?” Castiel shakes his head. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know.” Castiel hesitates, his eyes drifting to a point in the distance, his face pensive. Dean trusts this strange person already, clinging to him like driftwood in a storm addled sea. “Why don’t I tell you a story, until you fall asleep?” Dean nods his head, curling up in a ball facing Castiel, determined to stay awake.

“Once, long ago, there was an entire clan of mountain dragons,” he begins, and Dean is soon lulled into a stupor by the soothing sound of his voice.

“What is this place?” Dean asks when the story ends, letting his eyelids drift shut just for a moment. Castiel doesn’t answer immediately, and by the time he does Dean is too far gone to remember he even asked a question.

“They call it the Shadowlands.” 


	2. Chapter 2

_She is the daughter of a king, but that power is secondary to the magic she holds within her. The Matron attending her birth smiles at the sight of the caul over her eyes, knowing it will bring good fortune. She removes it carefully with a thin piece of parchment, pressing the caul into the paper for luck, then rolling it into a tight scroll. The Matron smiles to herself as she does this, thinking she will have the King's jeweler create a pendant for it, a silver sleeve to hold the precious charm, not knowing that this is the first act of many that will damn her young charge._

_By the time the princess is four it is evident that she is a font of powerful magic, for she makes flowers sprout from the snow merely on a whim. The king is well pleased to have a son who will lead after he is gone, and a daughter who will make him the most powerful ruler in all the seven kingdoms. Her magic is unfocused, wild, but he thinks that as she grows she can become a tool for him to wield, a means to subdue all the neighboring kingdoms and put an end to the wars that have plagued them all for generations. The king trains his son in diplomacy, warfare, economics; but he brings every magic user to the castle to train his daughter to use her gift, to focus her power and her strength._

_His one worry is that his daughter may recognize her own power to seize the throne, to one day rule for herself, but she worships her twin brother and seems to want nothing but to be by his side. The king considers this a blessing, for in truth her power is frightening to him. He prays each night that she can learn to control her magic, that she will one day be a great sorceress, but he fears her more and more each day._

_And then the rains come._

_It is not the suffering of the realms below, or even that of his own people, that drives the king to desperate measures. No, it is only after the death of the queen that he summons his daughter, fifteen years of age, to tell her she must use her magic to save them. The princess is already filled with the hubris of a powerful child, but even she is uncertain that she can stop it. Her mentors have taught her that the elements can only be swayed a little at a time: a soft nudge for a plentiful harvest, a pull for slightly warmer weather, a tug on a cloud into the right spot to make it rain._

_"They were not as powerful as you are," her father argues. “I brought them to teach you because they were all the realm had to offer, not because their power exceeds yours.” He can see her inner desire to please him warring with her teachings, and the king begins to envision how it will look for all the surrounding realms to know that his own put a stop to this tragedy. They will fling themselves at his feet, blessing him for his mercy. It makes him smile._

_And so, it is his own hubris that is to blame when his daughter invokes the power of the ancients to dry the land, and instead causes a mudslide that kills dozens in its black embrace. It is his own hubris that nearly also kills his own heir, who watched in horror from the branches of a tree as his twin was swept away from him, never to be seen again._

_His son breaks down as he relates the matter to his father, the way the princess cried out in desperation and terror before she could no longer scream or breathe. He doesn’t tell his father what he saw next, the hallucination produced by his own dismay and grief: how the charm at his sister’s throat had glowed like a flame, and a dark shape had appeared from a cloud of thunder and flame to snatch her away, disappearing into the sky._

_It haunts his dreams for decades._

*******

Dean wakes to a shout and a clatter, his eyes blinking open in a strange room, and he stares at its unfamiliar contours in confusion before the events of the previous night come back to him in a rush. He pulls the cover over his head.

“It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real,” he chants to himself over and over, but when he peeks out from the edge of the blanket nothing has changed. He is still on a thin cot in a kitchen he’s never seen before, staring into the eyes of a total stranger.

It’s neither Castiel nor the Lady, but a different woman with a kind smile, and it actually comforts Dean a little bit despite his strange surroundings. She’s thin and much older than his mother, wearing a plain spun garment with her short, white hair uncovered, but she has the air of a Matron about her. 

“Good morning child,” she says. “My name is Mildred. Let me take you to my cottage. I’ll help you bathe and find some fresh clothes to wear, and then we’ll come back here for breakfast.”

“With the Lady?” Dean asks, rubbing his eyes as he finally sits up and wiggles off the cot, taking Mildred’s hand as he yawns and trails along after her, taking no notice of his surroundings.

“Oh, there are many ladies, here, I’m not sure which one you mean.”

Dean is still half asleep as they enter a small cottage, and Mildred stands him before the fire, helping him to pull off his shirt and get out of his hose. 

“What’s this?” she asks, touching the fine chain around Dean’s neck, the pendant of a horned figure hanging from it. 

“It’s a symbol of my rank. It means that I’m the oldest, and have to take care of all those who come after me.”

“That’s nice, dear,” Mildred says, and Dean frowns.

She dips a cloth into a basin several times, then wrings it out and starts rubbing his face with it as he grimaces. She doesn’t say anything else as Dean begrudgingly lets her scrub him clean, then helps him dress in fresh clothing. It’s plain and it itches, besides being too big for his small frame, but he doesn’t want to complain because now he’s hungry. Mildred looks him over, nodding in satisfaction before taking him by the hand again and leading him back outside and across the grounds of wherever they are.

Dean stares in awe at the castle in the distance, thinking at first that he _must_ be home in Concordia, and this is simply a trick being played upon him. This place is also carved into the mountainside, the walls and ramparts identical to that of his home. Only, the closer he looks, the more he realizes that things are not quite as they should be. No banners hang from the walls, no soldiers patrol along the battlements, and at the very top is the room with a broken wall he found himself in the night before. From the outside, it looks like the very location that would be the family apartments at home, and he knows those were intact when he last saw them. 

“When can I go home?” he asks Mildred, and she gives him an odd look. 

“This _is_ your home now, child.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Come on, dear,” Mildred says kindly, tugging him along as he tarries. He’s too confused about this situation to fight her, looking about him desperately for a familiar face but seeing none. It’s not until they get close to the castle and round the back near the kitchen that Dean sees any other people, and it’s such a stark contrast to what he saw the night before that he slows down, marveling at the bustle of activity all around him. 

Mildred leads him into the kitchen, weaving through people at their tasks as though it’s a long-practiced dance, and the room grows quiet the further into it they walk. As they reach a long trestle table at the far side, he realizes that everyone has stopped to stare at him, and his first panicked thought is of his mother’s frozen face right before she screamed his name into the darkness. Mildred must sense his tense fear, for she stoops down to speak to him. 

“It’s all right, little one. They’re just curious about you. Come here.” She opens her arms, and he presses into her with gratitude and relief as she picks him up from the floor and turns back to the room. “Everyone, this sweet young man has come to stay with us. What’s your name, dear?” He hides his face in her neck, and she strokes his hair, cooing to him until he finally lifts his head and whispers it into her ear. “This is Dean, and our home is a strange place for him, so please take extra care to make him feel welcome.”

She doesn’t put him back down, instead sliding onto the bench at the far side of the table and keeping him in her lap, rubbing his back soothingly. 

“Do I really have to stay here?” he sniffles into her neck.

“I’m afraid so, child. Even if we wanted to take you back to your home, none of us know how to leave here.”

“Who are all these people?”

“Well,” she says, adjusting him to sit on her left thigh while she points people out with her right hand. “That lady in front of the fire feeds all of us, but you must call her Missouri. She doesn’t like to be called Cook.” The woman smiles at him, and Dean relaxes a little at her kind dark eyes and soft round face as she waves. “That big man behind her is Benny, and he’s our butcher, but he’s a dumpling of a man for all that he’s a giant who wields knives.” She pokes him in the ribs as she says it, and he can’t help the little giggle that escapes him as another lady sits down at the table.

“Hello,” she says, wiping her hands on her apron. “My name is Ellen, and I make sure everything is nice and clean.”

“Hello, Ellen,” he says dutifully, and she smiles in return. 

“It will take time for you to know everyone, but they are all very nice,” Mildred says, just as a gruff-looking man flops onto the bench on the other side of the table from them. “Well, except this one right here. He’s a rough character, and always in a bad temper, best to avoid him.”

“Now, woman, why do you have to go and be telling lies to this young boy about me?” 

“Is it a lie, though? Sounds like the truth to me,” Ellen says, earning a look of disdain from the man, and now Dean giggles outright. 

“Now, boy, don’t you be listening to everything these women say about old Rufus. I’m a gem of a man.”

“I don’t know about that,” says another man as he sits on the bench next to him. “Fool’s gold, maybe, but no gem.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t either of you fools be fighting at my table when we’re trying to show this sweet young man our hospitable side,” says Missouri as she approaches, a basket in one hand and a large platter in the other. “We’re about to break fast, so mind your manners or I’ll send you to eat out in the stables again.” 

The new man rolls his eyes before stretching his hand across the table towards Dean. “My name’s Bobby, young’un, and I tend to the animals with this grump here.” Dean shyly reaches out to take his hand and is given a perfunctory shake. Despite his gruff appearance, there’s a twinkle in this man’s eye that he likes. “After we eat, why don’t I take you to see? Do you like animals?”

Dean nods his head, and Mildred slides him off her leg to sit on the bench next to her.

Dean's face barely peers above the tabletop, but instead of feeling small he falls unobtrusive, and once he tastes Missouri's biscuits he stops thinking about all the strange eyes staring at him. Instead he focuses only on the small group near him. Mildred and Ellen are on either side of him with Rufus and Bobby across, and Missouri finally joining them at the table end. He looks up and down the table, searching for Castiel, but doesn’t see him, and he’s too timid right now to ask.

"You think you can part with him for a little while, Millie?" Bobby says as he gets up from the table, followed by Rufus.

"Oh, I think I can make do somehow. I'm sure he'll find the outdoors much more appealing than the laundry house." She puts a hand on Dean's head, running her fingers through his hair as she leans down to speak to him in a faux whisper. "You go along with these old men here," she says as Rufus glares at her, "and if they give you any trouble you run right back here to the kitchens and let Missouri know. She'll put them in their place well enough."

"I sure will," Missouri agrees, getting up from the table herself. "Rufus is already well acquainted with my second-best wooden spoon."

"I don't think that kind of bedroom talk is appropriate in front of the boy, woman."

Bobby just rolls his eyes as Ellen slides off the bench and helps Dean off the seat as well. Bobby puts out a hand, but his kind expression doesn't waver when Dean hesitates before finally reaching up, curling his small hand over the web between thumb and forefinger. Bobby's hand is warm and rough, like the hand of Dean's own father, and it makes it easy to follow along as they leave the kitchen and go into a short corridor that leads them outside.

The grass is free of morning dew, already burned off by the sun as they ate, and it's still green beneath their feet though the trees in the distance are starting to brown. Bobby leads him past the baking house and across a yard as Rufus follows behind, and doesn't speak again until they've neared a low, fenced-in area.

A couple of curious animals have wandered up to the wood rails to inspect the newcomer, and Dean reaches out a tentative hand to the closest one, smiling a little when it butts its soft nose up against his hand. He strokes its face, then its head, marveling at the odd sensation of its white, tufted coat. 

"These gals give us wool to make all our clothing. That one is Muffins. She's probably the sweetest of the bunch, so you're always okay to pet her whenever you want." 

The goats are next, and Rufus has to shout over the cacophony they make. "You stay away from these fools unless one of us is with you, you hear?" he says, not unkindly, and Dean nods. "They won't hurt you on purpose, but you're like to get trampled by overenthusiastic affection, is all I'm saying. Well, except for Marv. Marv’s a mean old billy goat bastard." 

“Rufus!” Bobby hisses at him, and the man just waves off his concern. 

“What? It takes one to know one!”

They show Dean the cow paddock next, though it's empty at the moment.

"Where are they?" Dean asks, not realizing that it's the first time he's spoken aloud to either of them, though Bobby and Rufus share a glance over his head. "They're still in the barn being milked," Rufus says. "Donna and Jody will be done with them in an hour or so, and then they'll be back out here."

"Can we see?"

"Best not disturb them during milking time. The women will want to fuss over the likes of you, and they don't need the distraction. We'll show you the stables first and then the kennels. Cows ought to be finished by then."

Bobby nods in agreement as he leads the way, and both men hover close to Dean as they introduce him to the first of the three horses in the stable, as though they expect him to be frightened; but Dean is used to large beasts bred to carry knights in armor as they joust with one another, playing at war. He goes right up to the first stall without fear, and the enormous black horse bends its neck to greet him.

"Well, I'll be damned," Rufus mutters under his breath. "You been around horses much where you come from?"

"Oh sure," Dean chirps, petting the nose in front of him. "My father's stable has a dozen horses like this one. What's his name?"

"Uh, this one is Impala. Your father had a dozen Friesians? He must have been a very wealthy farmer."

Dean shakes his head. "They weren't for farming, they were for jousting." He plants a kiss on Impala's nose, then moves down to the next stall. "What's this one called?" It's a spotted gray Percheron, not quite as large as Impala, but still a towering giant compared to the five-year old boy in front of it. Bobby shakes himself out of his stupor, coming to stand next to Dean.

"Her name is Samandriel," he answers, watching as Dean reaches out to pet its offered nose as well. "Is your father a horse breeder, son?"

Dean shakes his head. "No, he's a king." He wanders over to the last stall, this one holding a chestnut Percheron. "Do you have apples I can give them?"

"That one is Gabriel.” Bobby pulls an apple out of a bag hanging on a wall peg. “King of where, exactly?"

"Concordia." He misses the next glance Bobby and Rufus give each other. 

The horse lips at Dean's neck, and he giggles and draws away before petting its forelock, reaching for the apple with his other hand. "I don't know how far it is from here." He feeds the apple to Gabriel, who eats it with relish and then snuffles at Dean's tunic, investigating him for more. "Can I have apples for Impala and Samandriel, too?"

Bobby gets him two more since Rufus is busy holding up an empty stall with his shoulder, arms crossed as he watches the small, shy boy suddenly bloom into confidence in front of the horses. "So that would make you a prince, I guess. Not sure how I'm supposed to act now." He shrugs when Bobby glares in his direction as he passes Dean another apple. "What? I can't say I've ever met a prince before."

"How would you know? I could be a damn prince."

"Not with that face."

"My brother's a prince, too, but I’m the oldest," Dean says, approaching Samandriel with her treat, smiling as she gently takes the apple from his hand. He turns too late to catch the rude hand gesture Bobby makes at Rufus, taking the last apple over to Impala.

"Where is your brother now, boy?"

Dean looks pensive as he holds the apple out to the great black horse, who snorts in thanks after he takes it in his mouth.

"I left him behind." He turns somber again, stroking Impala's head, and Bobby gives Rufus a shove.

"Now look what you did," he whispers harshly, and Rufus holds out his hands. "I think they ought to be finished now with the cows, lad, why don't we head back to the pasture?"

"Can we come back here soon?" Dean asks quietly, and Bobby squats down before him.

"You can come back here whenever want." He holds out a hand, and Dean grasps it again with his small one, following Bobby out of the stables. Suddenly a piercing shriek rends the air above them, and Dean presses into Bobby's leg, clutching him tightly as his eyes look to the sky, searching for the source.

A large, dark animal is in the expanse of blue above them, low enough that Dean can make out the scaly texture of its skin and the sharp talons of its feet. It seems to be black of body, from its nose to the tip of its barbed tail, but the ridged scales on the underside of its long neck and down the expanse of its belly are the color of ash, as too is the leathery skin of its wings. Those appendages seem twice as large as the body of the beast itself, carrying it across the sky with ease.

Seeing this, Dean knows for certain that they are not in Concordia anymore.

Of all the tapestries in his home, his favorite hung in the family salon just to the left of his father's desk, and he can't remember a time that it didn't fascinate him. The bottom half of the tapestry was a roiling river, dotted with debris and struggling people, their heads and flailing arms above the water as they were no doubt swept along helplessly. The top half was what he spent long hours staring at, for it showed a large beast with the body of a young girl in its claws, gripping her shoulders as it carried her away from the flood. 

“What is it, Father?” he had asked once, and John had run his fingers over the tapestry, tracing the long dark neck and scaly body, all the way to the end of a spiked tail.

“The Masters say that this land was once ruled by great beasts that scorched the sky, like this one here. They called them dragons.” 

“Where are they now?”

John turned to him with a sad smile, sitting at his desk and putting Dean on his lap to face the tapestry.

“People were afraid of them, and so they were hunted into extinction.”

“What’s stinction?”

“ _Extinction_. It means that something doesn’t exist anymore, that it’s gone forever and there will never be anything else like it again.”

“Why?”

“People always fear what they don’t understand.”

“That’s sad.”

“Yes, it is. I would have liked to see a dragon, myself, but they’re all long gone.”

“Why did they hunt them when they save people?” Dean asked, pointing to the tapestry. John held him close, chin hooked over his shoulder as they looked at the piece together.

“They weren’t known for saving people, generally. The story of this tapestry is from the Great Deluge, when it rained so hard and for so long that most of the land turned into a raging river.” He pointed to the figure in the dragon’s claws. “They say that a great sorceress tried to tame the rains, but she angered the spirit of the dragons. It carried her off into the sky, never to be seen again. I don’t know about the sorceress part, though. I’ve always thought that she looks like a young girl, and the dragon is hardly bigger than she is.”

“Is it supposed to be really big?” 

“Oh, yes, they grew quite large, too large to fit inside the castle, even.” He shrugged, putting Dean back onto his feet. “Still, no one in living memory has ever seen real dragon, so no one knows what’s true anymore. Some people say that the dragon saw those screaming for help and had just taken the one he liked the most, tearing her from the water to fly away to his secret lair.”

"Why?"

"It's possible he was lonely, and needed a companion," John had said.

"Like a pet?" Dean had asked in confusion, and John had glanced in the direction of the bedrooms where Mary was having a lie down, since the burgeoning swell of her belly made her feel unbalanced and sickly then.

"Or...maybe it was for food," John had said, reaching out to tickle Dean's ribs until he squealed, telling him how delicious he probably was, and would make a wonderful snack for a dragon.

It hadn't deterred Dean in the slightest, and he'd studied the tapestry even harder after that, wondering.

The beast above him in the sky is definitely real, easily twice the size of a grown man, and Dean looks at it with a mixture of fear and wonderment. Bobby places a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, and when Dean finally tears his gaze away from the sight above him, Bobby sighs.

"Maybe now is a good time to talk to you about the rules."

"Is that a real dragon?" Dean asks breathlessly, and though Bobby nods it is Rufus who speaks.

"We call it Storm."

*******

They are standing on the far side of the stables, just before the treeline into the forest, and Dean can see that just before them are large white stones embedded into the ground. These boulders glitter when the sun hits them and are spaced evenly all along the edge of the forest, as though they'd been placed there on purpose. Bobby picks him up, pointing to the stones in the distance.

"First, know that you must never, ever, venture beyond the stones. No harm will come to you in the kitchens, and you may go anywhere on the grounds that you wish, but never pass the stones. Understand?"

"Why?"

Bobby looks into the forest, and Dean can see the muscle in his jaw working even beneath the scruff of his reddish beard.

"It brings the storm, you could say. Promise me you will never pass between them and into the forest?"

"What's in the forest?"

"Danger, and if you go there none can help you, for no one here will breach the barrier of the stones. Do you understand?" Dean nods solemnly, and Bobby sighs in relief before turning them back in the direction of the pasture. “Next, you must never enter into the castle after dark. We use the kitchens out of necessity, but the rest of the castle is dangerous. Millie told me you crawled under the barrier in the corridor, and we’ll be making sure to block that up but good now.”

“But…” 

“But nothing. It’s forbidden for us to go there after dark. Some say it’s haunted, which I think is bunk, but that doesn’t change what I said. The place is crumbling down, and you could get hurt if you wander around. Got it?” Dean nods again. "Okay. Those are the most important rules, the ones all of us vow to never break. The others are easier, because they all have to do with us taking care of each other. Be mindful of the others and do as they tell you, for none mean you any harm."

"I want to go home," Dean scowls, and Bobby nods in agreement.

"I know, but I can't help you with that. None of us can, but we will do our best to make you feel at home here."

As they reach the fence of the paddock, Bobby places Dean to balance on the middle rail and stands behind, bracing him with both hands as they look out at the animals chewing grass. There are four in varying shades of brown, and Dean's scowl changes when one of them looks up at him curiously as it slowly masticates greenery. On one side of the enclosure is a small building, and as they stand there another cow comes out into the field, led by two women.

Bobby waves them over as they shut the gate behind their charge, but the new cow paces along the inside of the fence with them to greet their visitors.

"Gals, this here is Dean, and he arrived just last night." The women are dressed alike but are otherwise dissimilar; the tallest one has a lean, athletic build and short dark hair with a serious mien, while the other has long, blonde hair with a curvaceous body and huge, bright smile that's aimed in his direction.

"Well hey there, little fella," the blonde says, reaching out a finger to touch his nose. "My name's Donna, and this is Jody." He whispers a shy greeting until his attention is drawn to the cow standing in front of him now, waiting patiently. "Oh, let me introduce you to this lady here. This," she says, patting the cow's head affectionately, "is Janet, and she's the leader of the pack." The cow looks at him expectantly, one ear giving a twitch. "I think she wants you to pet her." Dean gives Janet a mistrustful look. "It's okay, she's very gentle, I promise." Dean reaches out a tentative hand, stroking the nose in front of him, and Janet gives a low, pleased noise before lumbering off to join the rest of the herd.

"She likes you!" Jody says, giving Dean a close-lipped smile. "Our girls here are all very gentle, so you don't have to worry around them, but you should never go into the paddock without me or Donna. At least not until you're bigger, okay?" 

"Aren't you just precious?" Donna says, reaching out to tickle his ribs as he shies away, laughing. "Why don't you let me show you around?" She holds out her hands, and when Dean reaches back she takes him in her arms and plants him firmly on a hip. "Come on, I'll show you where we work."

Dean spends the entire day like this, being passed from one set of people to another, seeing all the work they do on the grounds. It's an entire community that exists solely to sustain itself, a people with an absent queen in a castle with no kingdom.

And at several times during the day he catches a glimpse of the creature patrolling the skies, occasionally making its presence known with a roar, like any storm filled with thunder. 

*******

After another hearty meal in Missouri's vast kitchen Dean falls asleep at the table, only waking a little as Ellen carries him to the cot in the corner. He yawns as she helps him out of his shoes and his hose, pulling back the blanket for him to crawl under even though it's just gone on twilight outside.

"Where is the Lady?" Dean asks her sleepily. "Why did she send me here?"

Ellen tucks him in, patting him on the chest. "I don't know, sweetie. A Lady sent all of us here, at one time or another, but none of us know why." She hesitates, then seems to make a decision. "I'm sorry that she took you away from your family, Dean, but I'm not sorry that you came to us, because I know we'll take good care of you."

"Where's your family?"

Ellen shakes her head. "I can’t answer that, I’m afraid. You’ll find that’s true for everyone here. We don’t know where we come from. Truth be told, we’re all amazed that you do." She looks away, out into the now empty sky beyond the window. "There's an ache, sometimes, in my heart, an ache that nothing seems to fill. I wonder sometimes if it’s my family, missing me." She looks back at him and smiles sadly, wiping at her eyes. "It helps, having something to do and people to take care of. I don't want you to be sad. We're actually all quite happy here, and you will be, too, in time." 

“I’m going to go home tomorrow,” he says petulantly, and she pats him on the head. 

“You go to sleep for now, and when I’m finished cleaning up and ready to leave I’ll find space for you to sleep in my cottage, okay?”

“Can’t I just stay here?” he asks, because the kitchen feels more familiar to him than anything else here. The contours of the hearth, the layout of the room, even the dry goods storage all remind him so strongly of the place where he and Celeste would plot their next adventure while her mother kneaded bread. “It smells like home.”

He can see whatever argument Ellen was going to make die on her tongue. 

“Alright. You can sleep here again, but you mustn’t try to get back into the castle proper. Remember what Bobby said. There’s lots of crumbling stones, and no one wants you to get hurt. Do you want me to stay until you fall asleep?”

He shakes his head and she gives him a kiss on the forehead, pulling the blanket up to his chin. He manages to drift off again before she's even left the room.

He wakes some time later in the full dark, with only the coals from the hearth giving off a glow in the room, but even in the low light he can make out a figure moving about. He lies there for a time, listening to the sound of his own breath, and when his eyes have adjusted to the darkness he sits up. He’s not alarmed by the presence despite the quiet; his father’s castle is always full of life, and even in the dead of night there are people on guard. Dean was often caught creeping about the castle when he should have been in bed, and had been chastised more then once by either a matron or a soldier when he’d been caught exploring. 

"Hello, Dean," says a voice from the far side of the room, and Dean can finally make out Castiel sitting on the trestle table with his legs dangling off the edge, peering at him across the distance. 

"What are you doing over there?" Castiel hops off the table and crosses the room slowly, keeping to the shadows, and Dean grins up at him when he nears.

"How was your first day?" he asks, sitting on the floor so he can look Dean in the eye as he lies back down. "Was everyone nice to you?"

"Yes," Dean says. "They fed me and showed me all the animals, and Bobby let me work in the stables with him and watch while he fed the horses and the pigs. He let me feed the chickens all by myself! Then Donna and Jody let me watch while they did the afternoon milking, and Donna even let me help her milk Janet." His excitement fades, and he twists the blanket in his hands. "Everyone is nice, and I liked helping, but I still want to go home." He sniffles a little, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. 

"I'm sorry, Dean."

“Did you know there’s a dragon?”

Castiel's expression doesn't change, but his eyes catch the embers for a moment, making them flare into brightness. "Were you scared when you saw it?"

Dean hesitates, thinking it over, then nods his head slowly.

"Most little boys would know right away that they were scared of a dragon, Dean. You must be very brave to have to think about it."

"It reminded me of my family's solar, and the tapestry that hung there. My father told me the story of it once, but the dragon was always my favorite part."

"Is that so?" Castiel says thoughtfully before changing the subject. "I’m surprised to find you sleeping in here. Did no one tell you that the castle is forbidden after dark?”

“ _You’re_ allowed in here.” Dean crosses his arms defiantly, as if daring Castiel to argue. “How come you can be here but no one else can?” 

“Ah, well. I’m supposed to guard the castle, and punish all the trespassers.” He raises an eyebrow at Dean as he says it, but Dean can only giggle, and Castiel gives him a small smile in return. 

“If you’re the guardian, can you take me to the Lady so I can ask her to take me home?” Castiel looks down at his hands.

“I don’t know where the Lady is, I’m afraid. Besides, why would you want to go home to...was it Corridia?"

"Concordia!"

“Oh my, it seems I’ve already forgotten. Well, you must tell me all about this place, or I’ll forget all over again. That way, if I see the Lady, I can tell her exactly where you need to go.”

Dean starts telling Castiel all the things he likes about home: his father's large, oaken desk, and the chaise by the window where his mother likes to read, of exploring the ramparts with Cook’s flame-haired daughter, Celeste. He rambles from topic to topic in the way young children do, uninterrupted by Castiel, who sits with his back against the wall and a soft smile on his face as he listens, and the last thing Dean remembers is a whisper. “Sleep well, young prince.”

In the morning he finds himself once again trailing behind Bobby and Rufus as they care for the animals. He’s worried that if he doesn’t get home soon his father will be furious, and his mother is probably frantic, wondering what has become of him. It’s when Bobby and Rufus start arguing by the goat pen that he manages to sneak away, heading for the treeline. He doesn’t know where he is or where the forest leads, but the need to find a way home overrides his fear of the unknown.

He reaches the white stones without being noticed, the barrier Bobby told him never to cross, and spares only a fleeting thought for that warning as he passes between them. 

He’s nearly in the forest when it happens.

A shriek pierces the sky behind him, and the section of forest ahead is struck with a jet of flame, the trees burning like giant candles. Dean stumbles and falls, scooting backward from fire as quickly as he can, the sudden fear that washes over him making his heart threaten to clamber out of his chest.

He hears a whooshing sound over his head, and then his feet are dangling far above the ground. He can feel the strong grip of the dragon’s talons around him but he shuts his eyes in terror, only able to register the shouting of people far below. It’s not long before he feels as though he’s descending but he still can’t look, and it’s only when he’s released and finds himself falling that his eyes fly open just before he lands in a mound of soft hay.

“Boy! Boy are you okay?”

“He has a goddamn name, Rufus! Dean? It’s alright, son, it’s all okay now.” Hands grasp at him but he can’t find his voice, and he’s pulled out and against Bobby’s chest, wrapped in a firm embrace. “There you are, you’re okay, shhh.” Bobby caresses his hair, surprisingly gentle for such a gruff man, and Dean can hear the clamor of concerned voices all around him. He’s passed into another pair of arms, and he buries his face into skin that smells like spices and smoke as Missouri carries him back to the kitchens. He realizes his teeth are chattering.

She sits with him in her lap, rocking him gently and caressing his hair. He grasps at her tightly, his hands clenching fistfuls of her dress. 

“Promise me you’ll never pass the stones again,” she whispers, and he nods fervently against her bosom. “You’re just a child, and I don’t want to lie to you, so hear me when I say this: there is nothing beyond the stones that won’t end in death by fire. Do you understand me?” She must take the sob that escapes him as a yes, and she holds him tighter as he cries through his realization that he will never see Concordia again, and he doesn’t know why.


	3. Chapter 3

_The princess awakes in a strange place, aching to draw a breath, the floor beneath her hard. Her head hurts and her thoughts are foggy; she can't remember how she got here, or from whence she came, not even her own name. She blinks a few times, trying to clear her eyes, then realizes everything around her is dark._

_Everything except a pair of glowing blue orbs several feet away from her._

_She wonders if she should feel fear as she lies there, waiting for her eyes to adjust; but she reasons that whatever this creature is, it's the reason she is alive. She moves into a sitting position, finding a wall to lean against, and the creature across from her lifts its head. She's never seen its like before outside of ancient texts and illustrations, long relegated to fairy tales._

_"Are you a dragon?" she whispers to it, and it makes a pitiful sound like a cry. It's curled up in a ball, its wings folded against its back, and she marvels at its black scales and sharp talons. It's bigger than she is, but not that much bigger than a grown man, and she wonders how old it is. She clasps the silver charm around her neck, the caul of her birth rolled tightly into the parchment inside, glowing warm._

_A fragment of conversation floats into her mind, a distant memory of a Matron giving this to her._

_"A symbol of fortune," the woman said. "It is a good luck charm, and will even protect you from drowning."_

_"That seems unlikely here in the mountains," she had pouted._

_She grips it hard, staring at her scaled savior, a creature pulled from myth and legend, the oldest of magics. She smiles to herself._

_"It must deep within my veins to have called you to me," she says to the creature, which tilts its head. She creeps closer to it, slowly putting out her hand, and soon enough the dragon bumps her palm with its head and a pleased growl. "You are bound to me now, little one, for as you have saved my life your own is now tied to it forever. As you live, so shall I." Light is beginning to creep in at the edges of her vision, and she takes in their surroundings until she realizes it is a cave. She gets to her feet with difficulty, leaning onto the dragon for support, and surveys the landscape beyond the opening. There is nothing but forest as far as she can see._

_"What strange land have you brought me to, young one? Can you take me home?" The dragon makes a cawing sound, then rises to its feet, bowing its neck to in invitation. She hesitates a moment, then climbs upon its back, holding tightly as it leaps into the sky._

_The wind brings tears to her eyes, but she can’t bring herself to close them against the glory of flight, watching the land as it moves below them while the sun rises in the distance._

_Suddenly the dragon rears back, flapping its wings and giving a mournful shriek, and she holds on tightly as it makes its way to the ground, landing at the edge of the trees._

_“What is it, little one?” she asks, sliding from its back. It snuffles and makes that sound again, beating its wings in frustration, and she peers into the forest before creeping up to the edge. Beyond the treeline the air shimmers, and she can sense the hum of the barrier even if she cannot see beyond it. She takes a step towards it, the dragon behind her making a mew of concern, but continues cautiously until she can place her hand at what seems to be the face of it._

_“Cold,” she murmurs, feeling the fluid solidity of it beneath her palm, like the surface of water before you put enough pressure on it. She does just that, watching in wonder as her hand disappears, feeling nothing but space on the other side. She takes a deep breath and a step forward, putting her head through the barrier to peer at the other side._

_She jerks backwards so quickly that she falls, then pumps her legs frantically to get as far away as possible, scraping her hands on the brush in her haste. She breathes hard, closing her eyes before realizing it doesn’t block out the sight beyond the barrier, then staring into the dawn streaked sky to try and block it from her memory._

_The dragon butts its head against her shoulder, and she bursts into tears._

_“Where are we?”_

*******

Every day Dean learns more about the people around him and the life they lead, and as time passes the memory of his homeland becomes more and more like a story he heard once as he went to sleep. The day to day is often uneventful: everyone gathers for meals in the kitchen, and he learns who more of the residents are and their functions there. He follows different people about their regular tasks, watching Storm fly in the distance, marvelling at the way everyone treats it as a normal occurrence to have a dragon patrolling the sky above them. His own close encounter is never far from his mind, and he teeters between fascination and terror each time his eyes are drawn to the dark shape in the sky, pulling him away from whatever task is at hand to gaze at those large wings beating the air. 

It seems as though everyone here has a specific job, something they've always done, but Dean is just a child who never did anything but take lessons from his mother and watch his father work, a work that is nothing like what these people do. He starts with carrying water with Bobby every morning, barely able to hold a bucket half full with both hands on the handle, but determined to do so. It takes several months, but the first day he manages to carry a full bucket by himself, he beams with pride as Bobby ruffles his hair. 

Dean’s hands blister and scab over, but he’s filled with determination. He did not want to come here, but he also does not want to disappoint the people who are being so kind to him, a lost boy alone in a distant land. It's not so bad after a time, and he gets used to the woolen clothes he wears and the labor out of doors. Bobby reminds him of his father, with his gruff demeanor belying a kind and patient soul beneath. He clings to Donna, too, whose blonde hair and easy affection remind Dean of Mary, though she was not so vivacious as the milkmaid. 

He continues to sleep on the lone cot in the kitchen, and each night he wakes to find Castiel sitting nearby, watching over him. 

“Hello, Dean,” he says each night, always formal. Dean never sees Castiel during the day, not even at meals with the others, but each night he falls asleep in the kitchen and wakes at some point to find Castiel sitting on the floor nearby. Missouri had given him an odd look when he asked her why Castiel was never at their meals.

“I expect because he’s very busy,” was all she’d said, and Dean had soon forgotten about it. Castiel moves through the kitchen in the dark each night as quietly as a mouse, for Dean never hears him enter, but usually wakes to find him nearby. He’ll ask Dean questions about Concordia, rapt with attention as he listens, until Dean falls asleep again. 

Castiel is also fascinated by the stories Dean tell of the castle’s other inhabitants, often asking Dean questions about each person. 

“How come you don’t know anybody?” Dean is eight years old before it occurs to him to ask this question. “If you’re guarding the castle, how come I never see you except at night?” Castiel seems distracted, staring into the distance, and Dean has to say his name before he finally blinks and turns his attention back to him. 

"Well," Castiel answers slowly, "I have to guard the castle all night, so I’m asleep during the day."

"Are you always by yourself? Aren’t you lonely?" 

"It can be quite lonely, but I'm used to it. Besides, now I have you to talk to every night, and that makes everything better. Tell me about the harvest festival again?"

Dean learns to care for the goats, especially how to avoid Marv entirely, letting Rufus deal with him because he bites and seems to find Dean particularly delicious. Donna and Jody show him how to milk the goats as well, and a man named Victor shows him how to make it into cheese. Missouri teaches him how to take the cheese and cook with it, using it with eggs and squash and pastries in all different dishes. She sends him into the orchards to learn how to pick the ripe fruit from the trees, the men working there the youngest in the castle besides Dean himself, perhaps in their mid-twenties. Jesse is quiet and Garth animated, often pretending to make his hand talk to Dean as he teaches him the best way to pick an apple, with a roll and a twist.

Bobby tells Dean there’s room for him in his cottage if he wants to stop sleeping in the kitchen, but Dean shakes his head. 

“Castiel won’t have anyone to talk to if I’m not there.” Dean doesn’t turn away from petting Impala when he answers, so he doesn’t see Bobby turn to Rufus and mouth “Who?” or the shrug Rufus gives him in return.

A day comes when he slips out of the kitchen after the morning meal, following the corridor to the blockade. He considers for a moment, then crouches down to see that despite his threat, Bobby never blocked the opening. He takes a deep breath, hoping he can still fit, and with some difficulty enters the castle proper for the first time in years. He takes his time, checking the rooms and finding each of them empty in turn, but a vague memory of what would have been in each one back home tugs at him. He reaches the spiral staircase and climbs it cautiously, mindful of the disrepair Bobby spoke of long ago, but also cautious about what he’ll find at the top. He takes a deep breath in the upper corridor, glad for the shafts of sunlight piercing through the loopholes as he traverses it to the carved door he found long ago, his first night in the castle.

Dean pauses before it, unsure of how to proceed. It’s been years since he first met Castiel in this room, and he hasn’t been in it since, but he’s rattled by his inspection of the empty shell so much like the home he remembers. He needs to talk to someone about it, and Castiel is the only friend who understands, the only one he’s confided in completely about his long-lost home. 

Dean rests his hand on the face of the door, considering. Castiel will be sleeping, and not expecting anyone, especially in a place that’s forbidden for all of them. It would be an unforgivable intrusion. 

He pushes against the wood, and the door swings open with a creak.

The room beyond is empty, and no fire burns in the hearth. He approaches it nonetheless, reaching in to test the remnants for warmth, but they crumble to ash under his hand. The bed frame remains where he remembers, but it’s covered with a layer of grime. So too are the long curtains that separate the twin balconies from the rest of the room, and when he moves one to go outside it falls from the rod and pools on the floor at his feet in a cloud of dust. 

Coughing, he walks out onto the empty balcony, observing that the same is true of the opposite one. He leans on the balustrade, observing the grounds below. From here he can see all of the Shadowlands: the inner bailey with buildings of various industry, then the stone cottages built where the outer bailey would have been in Concordia. The orchards and pastures beyond the dwellings are a colorful patchwork encircled by the silent stones, and beyond that the forbidden forest. They expand out from the mountain castle like ripples on the water, concentric circles teeming with life, the people milling about with different daily tasks. 

And yet here in the castle: nothing. Nothing but empty rooms filled with detritus and dust, and the distinct absence of the one thing he’d hoped to find. A chill passes through him as he backs away from the balustrade, a whisper of suspicion creeping into his mind.

He leaves the room quickly, not venturing further to inspect the rest of that floor, knowing he’ll only find more of the same. He runs down the staircase, practically tumbling down the corridors in his haste, and pulls himself through the barricade so quickly that he scrapes his elbows in the process. He avoids Missouri as he passes through the kitchen, circumventing the stables and finding his way to the laundry house. Ellen is outside, hanging a neat row of linens with her back to him, and Dean breathes a sigh of relief when he goes inside to find Mildred all alone, sewing a tear in someone’s tunic.

“Is the castle haunted?” he asks without preamble. To his surprise Mildred doesn’t even raise her head, just continues sewing as she answers.

“That depends on who you ask.”

“I’m asking you.” Of everyone in the Shadowlands, Mildred has been here the longest. 

“Most people assume you have an imaginary friend, but I think you’re getting a touch too old for that to be plausible.” She finally stops sewing, placing her hands in her lap and looking at him directly. “It’s said that the castle has a guardian, so that none will disturb the dragon as it slumbers in its cave deep within the mountain .”

“What kind of guardian?”

“Are you asking if your friend Castiel is a ghost?” 

“Is he?”

Mildred looks at him for a long time before she answers, and Dean doesn’t so much as shuffle his feet as he holds her gaze. 

“I can’t tell you what’s true, because there are none here that will buck superstition. Not even me. So I’m afraid I don’t know, dear, but I’ll tell you this: until you came, none of us had ever heard that name before.”

*******

That night, Dean can’t sleep at all. He sits on the cot, waiting, staring at the wall as he hugs his knees to his chest. The room turns darker as the hours pass, and for the first time in years he feels afraid, but determined. 

Castiel finally enters the room, looking surprised to find Dean awake, perched on the cot and waiting. 

“Dean, why are you…”

“What are you?” 

Castiel’s eyes go wide, and Dean braces himself for a reaction. 

“Why do you ask me that?” Castiel asks softly, staying where he is on the far side of the room, but the look on his face confirms every suspicion Dean has. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He doesn’t know, here in this moment, why he’s so angry. It will take several years, turning this event over in his mind, for Dean to understand that what he felt was betrayal: that he had shared so much, described every memory of his home in detail, confided all his childish fears night after night in the dark, and never known that he was confessing to a ghost. By the time he comes to this conclusion, it’s years too late to take it all back.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Cas says, and Dean glares at him. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me.” 

“I’m not afraid of you,” Dean says coldly, swinging his legs off the cot and standing to face Castiel. “You’re a liar, and liars are just cowards in fancy dress. Cowards are nothing but fodder for the shadow and the storm.” It’s something he’d overheard his father say more than once, especially after long days spent on diplomacy with people he didn’t much care for. Dean turns away and stalks out into the night, ignoring the soft plea of his name uttered just once. 

Rufus finds him the next morning, asleep in a corner of Samandriel’s stall, but has enough good grace not to mention the dried streaks of tears on his face. 

Dean is given a spare room in Bobby’s cottage that has been cleaned and outfitted with a new mattress, filled with fresh hay. Being removed from a familiar place, the place that felt the most like home, throws him into turmoil. Dean is plagued by nightmares now, coming to covered in sweat and flailing at his bedsheets, clutching at the amulet at his throat. He will lie awake until his breathing evens out, turning over the single good memory he has of his mother, heavily pregnant with Sam; but she's blurry at the edges, her face undefined. For a moment he’ll miss his friend, the easy camaraderie and trust he felt in his presence, before he falls back to sleep cloaked in anger and shame.

One night he opens his eyes to the darkness, holding his breath as he listens to his surroundings, sure there is a presence in the room.

“Go away. You’re not real. I don’t want you here.” It seems the proper thing to say to a ghost, and though he hears nothing before he falls back to sleep, he never feels that presence around him again.

*******

Dean is eleven years old when Bobby starts teaching him to groom and care for the horses, first showing him all the tools they use and what they're for, then setting him up on a small step ladder so he can reach the withers. The following year Benny shows him how to handle the knives, how to break down a goat carcass, then a pig, teaching him the names of all the parts and which are the most flavorful. Sometime in his thirteenth year that Dean realizes that his home has little meaning for him anymore, and he has forgotten the faces of his mother and father. Their names, their histories, are no longer connected to any kind of memory or feeling; only remembered by rote, like the repetition of a child trying to learn an alphabet, burned into him during the nights he told his stories to Castiel over and over. He begins to envy the others their blank memories, mourning the idea of a place he barely knew, keenly feeling the loss of a family he can't feel in his heart anymore. 

The chain that his amulet hangs from, his only connection to the home he once knew, grows too tight for his neck and finally breaks. He clutches it in his hand, staring down at its odd features. His throat chokes with unshed tears until Jody walks up to take it from his hand. 

That evening at supper she hands it back to him, now fastened to a sturdy leather thong, and he slips it over his head with a grateful smile.

He stays far, far away from the stones, and learns not to flinch when Storm shrieks in the sky.

Dean is eighteen years old when a new face finally appears in the Shadowlands, and that’s when everything begins to change.


	4. Chapter 4

_The princess walks through the forest, following the line of the strange barrier, trying to determine its boundaries while the dragon patrols the air, each of them searching. She ignores her hunger and thirst while she walks, one hand trailing over the surface of the barrier, reaching out with her magic to feel for the edges._

_She passes out of the forest, edging along what looks like pastureland for a time, then adjacent to old orchards, long neglected and wild. Searching, always searching, trying not to let despair take hold of her heart as she moves along an abandoned vineyard, ignoring the tug at her mind of something familiar, focusing only on the task at hand._

_It is only when she finds herself back at the point where she’d begun that she relents, turning back towards the center of this vast place in which she’s found herself, walking towards the mountain that dominates the landscape, a mountain that reminds her so much of…_

_“Home,” she whispers, taking in her surroundings more carefully, looking beyond the dilapidated buildings and neglected cottages with their stone crumbling into ruin. It’s as if this place is another Concordia, one long abandoned and empty: the people extinct, the fields empty, every structure disintegrating as it endures the slow reclamation of the surrounding nature._

_She hears the dragon approaching and reaches out to stroke its neck when it lands clumsily beside her, the inexperience of its years evident._

_“I suppose you found no exit either, my young friend,” she asks, and the dragon lets out a pitiful cry in answer. “Do not fret, for my magic is powerful. I will find passage out of here, for both of us.” She scratches under its chin. “I will take you to my home, and you will be revered as my savior from the storm.” It makes a trilling sound, flapping his wings, and she smiles. “Storm.”_

*******

It is late in the spring, and they are picking white peaches from the orchard when there’s a strange flash in the sky. Dean and Jesse look up in shock, but they hear Garth make a whooping sound from somewhere else in the orchard. 

“Did you guys see?” His excitement is palpable, and Bess can’t stop grinning. “It’s been such a long time!”

“A long time for what?” Jesse asks, just as his partner Cesar arrives in their row from the spot he was working.

“We have a new arrival,” Cesar says, putting an arm around Jesse’s waist.

“Come on,” Garth says, pulling Bess along. “Everyone will be gathering in the kitchen to wait. Let’s go.”

A shadow passes overhead as Storm flies between them and the sun, but Dean doesn’t even glance up. 

Sure enough, the kitchen is teeming with people and the air is abuzz with conversation. “Hey everybody,” Donna calls out, and the room goes silent. “We’ve met our new guest. She’s with Millie now, getting cleaned up, and then we’ll try and get some food into her. She’s pretty skittish at the moment, though, so it might be a good idea if we didn’t shove everybody at her at once.”

“All right, clear out and go back to your duties,” Missouri says in a tone that brooks no argument. “You’ll get to see our new friend at dinner, once she’s had a little time to adjust. Scoot!”

People start filing out, and Dean hears Jesse grumbling about how he should’ve just stayed in the orchard, which makes Missouri glare at him until Cesar comes to his rescue. He plants a kiss on Jesse’s temple before maneuvering him out of reach of Missouri’s spoon, and Dean watches them go with a heavy heart. He pushes himself off the bench, but Donna grabs his hand as he passes.

“Dean, why don’t you stay a bit? The new girl is just about your age, isn’t that nice?” He knows that Donna sees more than she would ever say, probably noticed he way he looked at Cesar and Jesse, or at Garth and Bess, or any of the other people who seem to have found a partner in this isolated place: with longing, and loneliness. 

“You are not even remotely subtle, you know that?” 

She punches him lightly on the shoulder. “Too bad, bucko.”

He doesn’t particularly want to stay, but he’d never say no to Donna. He’s too restless to sit and wait, so he begins to wash dishes, blushing a bit when Missouri gives him an affectionate pat on the cheek.

He loses track of time, the repetition of the task helping to clear his mind, and so he’s almost forgotten the newcomer by the time Millie brings her into the kitchen.

“You just have a seat here, sweetie, and we’ll get you something to eat.” Dean turns to see a petite figure, and is a bit surprised to see that she’s wearing trousers and a boys’ cap. Perhaps Millie didn’t have anything suitable for her that fit. Missouri hands him a couple of mugs of apple cider, and he approaches the newcomer cautiously. 

“Hey there,” he says softly, sliding onto the opposite bench and placing the mugs on the table between them. “Brought you some cider.” The girl looks up at him with wide, green eyes, and a memory stirs. Missouri brings over a plate of food, placing it before her.

“Don’t wear your hat at the table, child,” she says, and the girl reaches up to pull the cap off her head, letting loose a shock of red hair that tumbles about her shoulders. It makes him long for home in a way he hasn’t for some time, the clarity of who she is stealing the breath from his lungs. 

“Celeste?”

“Her name is Charlie,” Donna says, giving Dean an odd look, but the girl’s eyes grow wide.

“How do you know that?” She sits back in shock, staring at Dean. “How do you know my _real_ name?”

He smiles sadly. “I should have known you would change it. You always hated being called Celeste.” The trousers and the cap make sense to him now, for even as a child Celeste hated wearing dresses because she couldn’t climb in them, and covered her hair because it always gave her away.

“Who are you?” She asks this last with a tone of wonder that does nothing to lessen the ache in his heart. 

“I’m Dean. Prince Dean. Don’t you know me?” She squints her eyes, studying him, then shakes her head. “We were children together,” he says gently. “Your mother was the cook in the castle where we lived.” 

“I don’t--” she starts, then looks away as though she’s trying to access the part of her memory where that fact is stored. He holds his breath, waiting, but the look of recognition never crosses her face. 

“I promise, it’s true. Before I--” _was taken,_ he wants to say-- “came here, you were my best friend. We had all sorts of childhood adventures together, and were always getting into trouble.” His throat dries up, and he thinks it’s because all the moisture has gone to his eyes.

“I don’t remember.” She pouts, turning to Donna. “Why can’t I remember?”

Dean stares at her in shock for a moment, then gets up and runs from the room, ignoring the shouts of Missouri and Donna behind him. He runs without stopping to the far side of the castle, away from the paddocks and the dwellings, ignoring the shocked looks of everyone he passes.

He wants to run beyond the stones and dive into the trees beyond, but instead he comes to a stop in the grape arbor with its twisting vines of cover. He falls to his knees at the end of a row, staring out at the invisible prison surrounding them and wishing he could go home.

*******

It’s long after dark when he finally emerges from his hiding place, when the gnawing hunger in his belly is too great to ignore, and the canopy proves insufficient cover against the nighttime chill. He tiptoes into the kitchen, not knowing if Celeste -- _Charlie, she goes by Charlie now_ \-- will be asleep on the cot in the corner, but he finds nothing there but a neatly folded blanket and relaxes. He sticks one end of a long piece of straw into the banked coals of the fire until it burns, then holds it as a candle while he searches for food in the larder, tucking a loaf under his arm and grabbing a bit of hard cheese and an apple in his free hand. 

Dean realizes he’s not alone as he leaves the larder, and the weak light offers just enough illumination for him to see a familiar face. Everything drops in his surprise, the apple rolling into the feet of the man pressed against the wall just before the flame goes out. 

He stands there in the dark, breathing hard as he waits for his eyes to adjust, so acutely aware that there’s another presence in the room he can hear it trying to quietly creep away.

“Castiel?” 

At first there’s no answer, and he can sense the hesitation in the air as he begins to discern the faint outline of a figure. He reaches out slowly, thinking his imagination is playing tricks on him, and he’ll grab an apron hung on a peg or some other innocuous item. Just as his fingers are about grasp the thing in front of him, the figure moves away and he gasps aloud.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says sadly, and turns just enough so that Dean can see his face.

Dean is eighteen years old and Castiel seems unchanged by the decade passed, though Dean would have sworn he was barely twenty when they met. Each time he’d asked, as a child, Castiel had just rolled his eyes and said "older than you". Seeing him now, like this, only reinforces his sense that Castiel is something unearthly, unreal, and that Dean should probably be afraid.

Instead he feels relieved.

“Hey, Cas.” That unchanged face brightens for a moment before crumbling into resolved stoicism. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to see me. I’ll go.”

“Don’t.” Dean can see him hesitate, but he can’t make out the expression on his face. “I don’t want you to go. Would you stay?” 

“Why?” Castiel tilts his head, so unchanged from the way Dean remembers him that he laughs a little bit. 

Dean sighs, leaning down to grab the bread and cheese before walking over to the long trestle table he’d fled that morning, when his old friend looked at him like a stranger. Moonlight filters in through the narrow windows, shafts of light crossing the table and falling on the stone floor like a cathedral. Castiel comes a little closer, but doesn’t step into the light, and Dean doesn’t push as he tears into the bread.

“You look exactly the same as I remember,” he finally says, and Castiel’s shoulders slump.

“You don’t,” Castiel says sadly, two small words to sum up the passage of ten years’ time, and Dean can only nod.

“Do you remember when I used to tell you stories of my home?” He’s pleased that there’s no tremor in his voice as he asks this, but he chews a bit of cheese before he speaks again. 

“Of course I do.” Dean wonders if Castiel stays out of the light because it will reveal what he truly is, the magic trick he showed a little boy long ago nothing more than his own, sad reality. Dean is happy for him to stay away in that case, because he needs Cas to be real, to be there for him in the way no one else is. 

“So many things I never told anyone. At first because I didn’t know them very well, and then later because I could see it made them all sad. To listen to me tell stories of home, knowing they didn’t have any to trade.” He smiles sadly. “You never seemed to care, though, always asking me to chatter on, eager with excitement. Trading old folk tales in exchange, telling me stories until I fell asleep. Where did those come from, I wonder?”

Castiel doesn’t answer while Dean eats enough to sate the gnawing in his belly, glancing up occasionally to make sure he still has an audience. 

“Does it matter?” Cas finally says, and Dean rubs his face with his hands before he changes the subject. 

“I was reminded of someone today. It was a bit unexpected.” 

“What do you mean?”

“I used to tell you about her all the time, back when, well. She was my best friend.”

“The little girl with the red hair, yes. Celeste. I remember.”

Dean closes his eyes, overcome with relief and gratitude so strong that tears spring to his eyes. “She’s here, Cas. She arrived today.”

“Dean, that’s…” The excitement in Castiel’s voice fades, and he looks away as the meaning of her arrival sinks in. “Does she…” he begins, but Dean just shakes his head. “I’m sorry.” Sorry that there’s another prisoner in this place, another person untethered from even the memory of the life they knew before. A person that Dean knows, who no longer knows him at all.

“I wish I knew what I did wrong, you know? What action caused this punishment.”

“You were only a child. You probably didn’t do anything wrong.”

“So what it was that made her choose me, send me here alone?” He opens his eyes to see that Castiel has moved into his line of sight, but stays pressed against the opposite wall as far from Dean as possible. 

“Maybe she didn’t think she was punishing you,” Castiel says, hugging his elbows and speaking so softly that Dean strains to here. “Maybe she thought she was _saving_ you.” 

“From what?”

One corner of Castiel’s mouth crooks up in a sad smile. “Whatever a five-year old boy imagines is a horror, I suppose. Like the smell of his little brother’s soiled nappies, or having his father tickle him until he cries.” 

“Do you remember everything I ever told you, Cas?”

Cas nods, and his eyes seem to flash for a moment as if they catch the moonlight. 

“I loved all your stories, the animated way you talked about your home. Your family, all the people in the castle. It all seemed so vibrant and full of _life_ and…” He trails off, shaking his head as if to clear it. “I hadn’t had anyone to talk to in so long.”

Dean suddenly feels overcome with guilt, for hurting someone who had only ever been kind to him.

“I’m sorry I took that away from you.”

Castiel shrugs. “I always knew it would happen.”

“It shouldn’t have. You made it so much easier for me to be here in the beginning, letting me talk to you about all I’d lost. You were my friend. I should have been yours.” He fiddles with the crumbs on the table, wiping them onto the floor. “Could I... Well. Would you let me come and visit with you sometimes, even if I don’t have interesting stories to tell anymore?”

“You would do that?” Castiel can’t keep the excitement out of his voice now. “Can you tell me all about taking care of the animals again, like you used to? And about Bobby and Rufus and Jody and Donna…”

“Yeah,” Dean says, breaking out into a grin. “It’s not very interesting but yeah, I can tell you all about it if you want.”

“Oh, but it _is_ interesting,” Castiel says, his face delighted.

“I’ve missed you,” Dean blurts out before he can help himself. When Castiel smiles, he feels an odd sensation in his chest. 

“I’ve missed you, too.”

*******

“Why won’t you talk to me?” Charlie corners him in the stables several weeks after her arrival, and when he curses under his breath Samandriel nickers in disapproval, though he’s pretty sure the snort Gabriel gives is one of amusement. “You said we used to be friends.”

“That was a long time ago,” he says, pressing his forehead to Samandriel’s neck, conveniently avoiding Charlie’s eyes as he seeks comfort from the mare. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Of course it does,” she says, the accusation in her tone softening. “I don’t understand what’s happened to me. How I got here, why I can’t remember, or why _you_ do. No one will talk about it. Why doesn’t anyone want to talk about it?”

“Because it’s easier,” Rufus says from behind them. “There’s no changing it. Best to just go about your business and try not to dwell on it Don’t be harassing Dean, now, missy.” He glowers at her from under his brows, and she rolls her eyes. 

“We were friends before. There’s no reason we can’t be again,” she says pointedly before she leaves, and Dean watches her go with a heavy heart. 

“Thanks,” Dean says, and Rufus gives him an uncharacteristic pat on the shoulder before he moves on.

“It might be good for you to have a friend here your own age,” Castiel says to him later from the darkest corner of the kitchen.

“You sound like Donna. Besides, you’re my own age.”

Castiel looks away, and Dean studies the shadow of his form, one leg extended before him, one arm resting on his bent knee, the line of his throat as he swallows.

“I’m not.” It’s the closest he’s ever come to acknowledging that he’s different, a topic he’ll usually dance around before changing the subject. 

“Your face could fool me.” 

Castiel looks at him, and Dean marvels again at the way his eyes catch the light sometimes. He wonders what color they are in the sunlight, if they’re as bright a blue as they seem.

“Appearances are deceiving. Besides, I’m not...” he trails off, but Dean knows what he would have said if he could.

_Alive._

After that, Dean makes more of an effort to talk to Charlie, though it takes weeks to stop calling her Celeste. She helps him feed the goats every day -- she has no problem with Marv, for some reason, and he's as docile in her presence as a lamb -- and catches Dean shaking his head at Donna, who's watching them from outside the milking shed.

"Is she thinking what I think she's thinking?" Charlie asks, not even pausing at her task. "Because I like you Dean, but I don't _like_ you. It's not that you're not handsome, or fun, or anything. It's just that you're not for me." She looks over her shoulder, lifting a hand when Donna waves in their direction. "Now _she_ could do it for me. Is she paired up with anyone here, do you know?"

"Celeste!"

" _Charlie_."

"Fine, then. Charlie! She's like twice your age."

Charlie shrugs. "Age is of no consequence if you're in love with someone. I think you should be open to love wherever you can find it. Don't you?"

An image of Castiel springs unbidden to Dean's mind, standing against the stone wall, out of reach of a shaft of moonlight.

Charlie turns towards the sky, tracking the flight of the dragon as its shadow approaches them, darkening the ground as it traverses the air. “Beware the shadow, and the storm,” she says softly, then frowns. “What is that from?”

Dean swallows. “Just an old wives’ tale, from home. Do you remember it?”

She shakes her head in chagrin. “No, it just came out. Like a reflex. I’m sorry. Would you tell me about it?”

“I’m not sure I remember much anymore. I’ve been here a long time.”

Charlie stares after the dragon as it passes, shading her eyes to watch it move into the distance. "This place is an open air prison, with a dragon for a jailer, for a purpose that no one understands." She shakes her head, putting her hand down as she makes her way out of the enclosure. "Garth told me that's the only dragon anyone has ever seen, which makes me wonder if it's just as much a prisoner as we are."

*******

"Tell me about Storm," Dean asks several nights later. Cas has taken to sitting cross-legged on on the farthest side of the trestle table. The moon is no longer full, and as the amount of light filtering into the kitchen has waned these past weeks Cas has been coming ever closer, though still keeping his distance.

"What do you want to know?" Cas asks sadly, hanging his head.

"Is it a prisoner the way that we are?" Cas stares at him with wide eyes, and Dean looks away, unable to bear the look on his face. "Sorry. I know we aren’t supposed to talk about it."

"What makes you think it's a prisoner?" Cas says after a time. 

"Well, why would it stay in this place if it had a choice?"

Castiel doesn’t answer for so long that Dean keeps expecting him to be gone each time he glances in that direction. 

“Maybe it has nowhere else to go.”

Dean remembers, long ago, sitting on his father’s knee as he told him how all the dragons were gone, and the wistful way he spoke about them. “There was a story you told me when I first came here, about a family of mountain dragons. Do you remember?” Cas nods, slowly, an inscrutable look on his face. “The father didn’t come home from hunting one day, and the mother went to look for him but didn’t return either.” He rubs his temples. “I always felt so bad for the little dragon but I used to fall asleep before the end of the story. I used to imagine happy endings for the baby when I was doing my chores, just idly daydreaming about it finding a new home and other dragons to love it.” He looks at Cas, then, sitting half-shadowed so far away. “Do you think that’s weird?”

“No,” Cas whispers, and Dean finds himself wishing desperately that he would come closer. He clears his throat. 

“How did that story end, anyway?” 

“The baby dragon was too afraid to go out on his own. He curled up in a ball deep in their cave and went to sleep, waiting for someone to come and find him.” 

“And did they?”

“No,” Cas said, shaking his head. “Years passed, and eventually he turned to stone.” Dean contemplates that for a moment, and a shudder passes through him. “Some things are worse than an open-air cage.”


	5. Chapter 5

_The dragon seems content to reside in its cave, sheltered as it sleeps in its high perch, undisturbed by anything on the ground as magic weaves its way through the leaves and the vines._

_Fruit from the trees gives the princess sustenance as she works, spending hours of each day experimenting with her magics, refusing to be daunted by failure. Sometimes the dragon keeps her company as it traverses the sky above in endless loops, marking the confines of their invisible cage over and over._

_Time loses all meaning, each day turning over itself, same upon same upon same. Excess magic soaks into the soil, turning the ground lush and verdant, bursting with life as she tries for a solution and fails, over and over again._

_Until, finally, the barrier cracks, swirling into itself like a whirlpool. In the end it was almost easy, once her magic found the thread: the siren call of home, the earth of Concordia in her blood._

_Storm alights next to her, its graceful and near silent descent proof positive of the passage of time. She places a hand on its neck, stroking its scales with affection that it leans into as though it were a cat._

_“Together, then,” she says, but as they move towards the portal the dragon slows its steps, then finally halts before the entrance. “Don’t fear, my friend, see?” She puts her hand through the portal, easily reaching into the other side, then putting her head through as she’d done to the barrier when they first arrived. Only now what she sees on the other side is a place she knows well: the castle of Concordia in the distance, decked with colorful banners calling her home. She pulls back, turning to Storm with an eager smile, but it fades from her face as she senses its distress._

_“What is it?”_

_Storm approaches the portal, attempting to put its head through, but the swirl of magic rebuffs it. The princess stands back with a frown, considering, putting a hand to it again and closing her eyes, concentrating._

_“It will only allow passage to those of my kind,” she says lowly, realization dawning as she steps away. “You cannot enter.” Storm makes a low, sad sound, and she looks at it, considering.“No, I will not leave you. You will never be alone again.” She throws her arms around its neck, holding tight, wishing it were a human so she could wrap the whole of its body in her arms._

_“Do you trust me?” she asks of it, pulling away at the spark of inspiration, and when Storm makes a noise of assent, she places a hand on its long neck, stroking the warm scales. “Close your eyes,” she says softly, and soon after that the dragon is no more._

*******

The months pass, and life goes on as it always has in the Shadowlands. They harvest the summer fruits, Missouri turning them into pies and pastries that stain their fingers with berry juice and turn their tongues different colors. The goats and lambs are weaned, and Dean lectures Charlie about getting too attached to them, hearing Bobby in his own voice. The nights are too warm, making Dean more restless than usual, and his mind is full of Castiel even on the nights he doesn’t visit with him. 

Especially on those nights. 

Questions run through his mind in a frenzy, gamboling over one another in their excitement to be the first one he asks, if he can ever find the courage to ask any of them.

_How long have you been here?_

_Can you ever forgive me?_

_Why can’t you be real?_

And a host of other questions he can’t even formulate yet as thoughts, just images without context: Castiel’s hands, or his throat, or the curve of his lips as he gives Dean that sad, soft smile that says he thinks he’ll never be enough.

“I think you have a secret,” Charlie says to him one day as they rest in the shade of a peach tree, flat on their backs, both of their shirts discarded in the heat and pillowed below their heads. 

“Why do you say that?” Even he thinks the nonchalance in his voice sounds forced, and he takes another bite so as not to have to speak again.

“You wear a different face when you think no one is watching. Pensive, and maybe a little sad.” She rolls onto her side to balance on an elbow as she pokes Dean in the ribs, and he shies away from her with a grunt. “You can talk to me about it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll think I can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy.”

“Dean. We are living in a land none of us can leave that is regularly patrolled by a dragon. I think I left judgemental four coach stops ago.”

He laughs despite his somber mood, and Charlie smiles before falling flat on her back again. 

“So tell me,” she says as they stare at the blue sky through the dancing leaves. 

And he does.

*******

“Do you think you feel drawn to him just because he was the first person you saw here?” 

They’re sitting on a large rock in the eastern pasture, gazing up at the night sky, the stone beneath them still warm from the sun’s day-long caress. 

“I don’t know. It was different before -- I was just a child then, and there was something about him that made me feel safe. Then, when I got older and realized what he was, I felt betrayed. I think more than anything I was scared, and it was convenient to use that betrayal as a reason to stay away.”

“Until I came,” she muses, nodding. “Even if you did it unconsciously, you went back to the only other person here who knew enough about your old life, about me. The only person who could understand why seeing me hurt so much.” She knocks her shoulder into his softly, and he leans into her for a brief moment in silent communication.

“Since then, it’s like he’s on my mind all the time, and not because I sorrow for his plight. I think about him in ways I’ve never thought of anyone.” 

“Like you want to reach out and touch him.”

“Yes,” he breathes out, grateful for her instant understanding. “Except that I _can’t_. I never can.” He rubs his face with his hands before wrapping his arms around his drawn up knees. “Everything I want is a bad idea.”

“Dean,” she says, pressing closer and putting an arm over his shoulders. “I don’t believe in fate, or a grand design of purpose. But I know that this is a strange life we’re living, and we all need comfort wherever we can find it. Whatever Castiel is, he’s still a being with thoughts and feelings, and form is irrelevant where love is concerned.” 

“I never said I was in love.” 

She moves away and leans back on her hands. “Fine, then. Lust, in your case.”

“Charlie!”

“What? I can’t help it if you have dirty ghost thoughts.”

“I do not have dirty ghost thoughts.”

“You absolutely do. You waxed poetic about the shape of his hands for quite some time.”

He hides his face in the bend of his knees. “It’s not just about that, okay?”

“So what is it about, if not just the hollow spot at his throat, or the divot in his chin, or…”

“Just-- more. I don’t know. The way he tells a story, like he’s actually lived it. His wry humor, which I forget about until he remarks on something Rufus says or does and then I can’t stop laughing. The way his face lights up when I tell him stories about my day, like he takes so much joy in the experience. Just the way he _listens_ …” He trails off, picturing the way Castiel’s face looks in the low light from the banked coals of the fire, sitting just a couple feet away these days with his chin perched on his fist. 

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Charlie asks softly, when he doesn’t speak again for several minutes. “You love him.”

He raises his head, turning towards the castle, a darker silhouette against the night sky, blotting out the stars. 

“I don’t know. I don’t know what this is. I just feel...this longing. To be with him even when I’m not.”

“You should tell him.”

“What if...” He swallows, his throat suddenly dry. “What if it scares him off? What if he disappears, and I never see him again?”

“You mean, what if he does to you what you did to him?” Dean closes his eyes, then nods. “Then I’ll be here to comfort you. And maybe, when he’s had some time, he’ll give you a another chance, too.”

*******

The courage of conviction he feels after talking to Charlie is much more difficult to put into practice, and as summer plans to leave them he still can’t bring himself to say anything to Castiel. He starts spending almost every night in the castle, and Cas never fails to appear when Dean is there, as though he can sense his presence.

In the Shadowlands nothing feels strange anymore.

"You know," Dean says on an autumn night turned cool, "I've been here now longer than I was ever in my homeland." They’re leaning with their backs against the wall by the hearth, looking out the windows at a moonless sky crowded with stars, and Dean is painfully aware of Castiel’s fingers just a few inches from his own. It’s been months now, this hyper awareness of Castiel’s proximity to him, of wanting to touch and being afraid to try. "Do you miss it?" Castiel asks for the first time in many years.

"I don't know. I don't even know if it matters."

"What about your family?"

Dean wraps his arms around his knees, resting his chin on them as he stares out at the night. "They haven’t been my family for a long time." 

"I'm sure that they still think of you, no matter what has transpired in their lives."

"I hope they don't," Dean says sadly. "They should forget me." _Because I have forgotten them_ , he thinks, but cannot say.

"Don't wish for that," Castiel says fiercely, and Dean lifts his head in surprise. "Never wish for something like that. It is a gift to be remembered by someone. A treasure." Castiel gets to his feet, his agitation so surprising that Dean is frozen where he sits. "You're never truly lost until you are forgotten."

Dean scrambles to his feet, instinctually reaching out as though to take him by the shoulders, but Castiel takes a step back out of reach. “Hey, I’m sorry. Don’t be upset.”

Castiel looks away from him, fists clenching with the muscle in his jaw, before he relaxes and slumps in defeat. “It’s just...somewhere out there are people who still think about you. I don’t have that. I never will. There’s no one who will remember me when I’m gone.”

“You have me, Cas.”

“You won’t have a chance to remember me, Dean. I’ll still be here long after you’ve gone.”

“I don’t care. You’re all I think about.” He doesn’t mean to say it, but now that he has he can’t stop. “You’re always in my thoughts, from the moment I wake, and each night when I close my eyes you’re with me still.”

“I don’t-- what are you...” He closes his eyes, shaking his head, and Dean moves closer.

“Open your eyes,” he says softly. Castiel looks at him then, blinking back unshed tears. He looks so real, so tangible, and Dean leans in without thinking to kiss him. 

He’s surprised at how natural it feels to brush their lips together, and even more so that Castiel’s lips are real and alive beneath his. He takes the smallest step closer, thinking he’d like to try that again, but Castiel steps back sharply, widening the distance between them. 

“I have to go.”

"Go?" Dean echoes, disbelief and distress crowding against one another in that single word, as though they've each staked out a letter and are fighting for dominance. "You can’t go." It sounds childish, even to him, but he can’t help it. He can’t think of anything else to say, only knows that it’s important that Castiel _stay_ , stay here, with him.

“I can’t do this. I’m sorry, Dean.”

“But, Cas, how are you…”

Castiel gives him an unreadable look, eyes flashing with starlight before he disappears from the room.

*******

He doesn't see Castiel the next night, or the one after that, and he worries in a way he never has before. He thinks about the kiss, and how right it felt for him to finally cross that line, stunned to find that Castiel felt like blood and breath and bone only to disappear from his grasp.

On the third night, he dreams again of the darkness, of his form shifting through it under a power not his own, but this time it's not a woman screaming his name that he hears. Instead it's the shriek of Storm, piercing into the empty air just before he breathes fire, and Dean is engulfed in the flames and can feel himself burning...

He bolts awake, sitting straight up in bed, his night clothes soaked with sweat and tears, only to find the room empty. He swings his legs off the bed and leaves the cottage abruptly, splashing his face with water from the rain barrel as he tries to get his breathing under control. The sky is just beginning to change in the distance, a precursor to the dawn, when he makes a decision.

As a child in Concordia he’d often explored the castle rooms with Charlie, but for the most part it was boring. No treasure waited to be found, no prisoners were in any of the dungeons, and if there were any secret passageways they had never found any -- but one. Because of that he’s now on the side of the castle opposite the kitchens, using an oil lamp as he searches for a seam in the stone of the mountain.

He’s almost given up hope when he finds it, the crack filled with moss and indistinguishable from the rock face. He holds his breath as he pushes, letting the air out of his lungs in a rush when an opening appears before him. He ducks through the doorway, pulling it shut and throwing the bolt, then holding the lamp high above his head to let the light flicker around the dungeons. 

He and Charlie had been standing in the stable, waiting for the rain to pass, when Dean remembered another rainy day, long ago. They’d found a hidden passage out of the castle, forgotten even by the guards, its original purpose unknown. It had been boring to them once they realized it only led outside instead of to a secret horde of treasure, and he remembers now how Cas had laughed when Dean had told him that story. The castle around him is completely silent, and the only other movement besides Dean is the dust his passage kicks up from the floor, the motes dancing in the light of the oil lamp like strange fireflies. He doesn’t check any of the rooms, knowing in his heart that Castiel won’t be in any of them, and when he finally reaches the spiral stair he takes a deep breath before he ascends.

He makes his way to the same room where he’d first met Castiel, and then later discovered was long abandoned and empty. He approaches it slowly, pondering once again whether or not to knock, and then finally pushing open the door. 

Still no fire burns, the bed frame is empty and in disrepair, and the balcony curtain he’d touched ten years ago is still pooled on the floor. He’s certain now that in another life it was his family’s solar: his mother’s chaise sat in front of the oriel window, his father’s desk opposite the fireplace, the tapestry that fascinated Dean so much hanging beside it. 

He walks into the room, looking behind the door, walking out on the empty balcony to check the other side, running his fingers along the balustrade. 

“Cas, where are you?” he whispers to into the night. He turns, eyes scanning the castle walls, and they alight on the ruined room at the opposite end of the castle. 

He re-enters the corridor, heading in the opposite direction from whence he came, feeling a strange sense of deja vu. The slowly awakening sky casts enough light through the loopholes to throw divisions on the stone floor, like markers of the distance he’s crossing back into the past, to the room where he first arrived. The room that had been his own bedroom, shared with his brother Sam. He wonders if he ever truly left Concordia or if he’s a ghost himself, haunting the corridors of a life he once knew and unable to join it anymore. 

Dean finds the short corridor that mirrors the other, expecting the heavy door to creak open under his hand, but it moves inward silently, leading to a short set of stairs winding upwards. His head finally breaches the opening to the room above and there, silhouetted against the night sky, is a lonely figure.

"Cas," Dean breathes in relief, and the figure turns. For a moment the eyes flash, catching the light of the lantern, and then Dean can make out the features of his friend. 

"Dean, what are you doing up here?"

"I'm sorry!" He blurts it out before he ascends fully into the room. "I wish you hadn’t gone away, and maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but…"

"Dean, you can't be here."

"What? Why? Look, I know you’re upset with me but if you’d just listen, please.” He jogs up the last few steps, placing the lamp on the floor. Castiel shakes his head frantically, rising to his feet and putting out his hands, holding Dean at bay.

"You don't understand, Dean, you have to go!"

"You're right, I don't understand. Why can’t we talk about what happened?"

"It's dangerous up here, Dean, please, please leave!"

"Cas, if you can be here than so can I, it's no more dangerous for you than for me." He moves closer, slowly reaching out with one hand to touch Castiel’s face, his eyes silently asking for permission. Castiel closes his eyes as he relents, and Dean’s fingers graze his cheek, solid and warm. 

“Are you real?” he whispers, and Castiel reaches up to cover Dean’s hand with his own.

“ _You_ make me real.”

Dean gasps as he curves his fingers around Castiel’s neck, leaning in to press their lips together softly. Castiel doesn’t move at first, and then he seems to melt along with his resolve, pressing himself into Dean as he returns the kiss.

Two things happen at once: a sliver of sunlight appears over the crest of the horizon just past Castiel's shoulder, and he shoves Dean away from him, hard. Dean tumbles backwards, falling to the stone floor and scraping the palm of his hand. He looks up, a word of reproach on the tip of his tongue before he freezes altogether at the sight of Castiel, crying.

"I don't want to hurt you," Cas sobs, backing away towards the break in the wall, and suddenly everything shifts. “I never wanted to hurt you, Dean. I never wanted to hurt anyone.” He backs away, holding one hand out as though to ward him off, and that’s when Dean realizes there’s something else in the room: a dark mass behind Castiel.

 _Storm_. 

The dragon is curled up in a ball, and Dean opens his mouth to warn Cas as he backs toward it, but then the words freeze on his tongue as he realizes that Castiel is changing: his form is losing its opacity, going lighter by the moment as the sun rises, and Dean can actually see the dragon through his torso. He wonders idly if anyone would hear him should he scream.

“Dean,” Cas says urgently, and Dean’s eyes flick from the dragon to those bright blue orbs, glowing brightly even as the body they reside in loses definition in the rising sun. “Listen to me, Dean, before it’s too late: I am the dragon, but the dragon is _not me_. You have to get up. You have to _run_!” 

Dean knows he should flee, should run down the stairs as quickly as his legs can carry him, but he can't feel his limbs and his mind is numb with terror. It only takes a minute but it feels like hours, and Dean doesn't breathe through any of them. Cas takes the final few steps back until it seems that he’s standing within the dragon itself, his form a barely-there shimmer. 

“I’m so sorry, Dean,” he says before he disappears completely. The dragon shakes itself as it wakes, stretching out its wings and raising itself on all fours as it rises from its slumber, fixing Dean with its piercing blue gaze. 

Storm has come.

The beast regards him for a moment, folding its wings and tilting its long neck to study him. The gesture is so much like his friend that it unlocks his tongue, and he finally draws a breath to speak.

"Castiel? Can you hear me?"

The dragon takes several steps forward, towering over him, and Dean feels warm liquid soak his hose before he realizes he’s let his bladder go. Storm leans in close, and Dean shuts his eyes, sure that this is the end, and all he can think is _I just want to go home_ before realizing madly that he _is_ home.

Hot air bathes his face as the dragon snorts, and he hears its talons clicking against the stone, can feel the heat of its body leave as it moves away. He opens his eyes again to see it across the room, turning to glance back at him before its powerful wings stretch to their full length and launch it into the air.

He can hear Storm shriek into the sunrise just before he blacks out.


	6. Chapter 6

_No one recognizes the two strangers travelling through the valley province of Lawrence, but they attract the notice of everyone. The woman is striking in both appearance and demeanor, her clothing and the jut of her chin regal in a way that most of them have never seen up close. The boy with her is equally stunning to look upon, with dark hair and bright blue eyes like a summer’s day, but his mannerisms are awkward and strange, even for a child. No dust clings to the hems of their travelling cloaks, and the velvet of their garments looks newly made despite the weeks they’ve been travelling through the land._

_Rumor precedes their entry into Concordia proper, and even the court is intrigued._

_“The people say that she is often coaching her child on speech and manners, but she herself seems to know our customs.”_

_“Perhaps she was wed to a foreigner from a distant land, and is bringing her son to visit her homeland?”_

_“But who is she, then, that none know to look upon?”_

_“It is entirely possible that her family escaped to another land during the Great Deluge.”_

_“She could have still been raised in the tradition and customs of our land.”_

_“They should be brought to the castle when they arrive, so that we may inquire about them.”_

_It takes a week before the mysterious pair finally reach the castle of Concordia. The travellers are ushered into the Great Room, where several people stand around the man seated on the throne. The assembled company eye the strangers appreciatively, for the boy is winsome in his fitted doublet and breeches of crushed blue velvet, lighter blue hose hugging his calves. His hand is hidden in the long, draping sleeve of the woman, doubtless holding onto her hand as they walk down the aisle. She wears a determined expression on her lovely face, framed by long brown hair, her back straight and the air about her regal._

_They seem ethereal to the assembled company, who stand in patient silence as the newcomers genuflect before the throne; they react with shock as the man seated there pushes himself to his feet and stumbles awkwardly off the dais to grasp the woman’s shoulders._

_“Amara?” he says, and everyone in the room gasps. It is a name they all know, only uttered in whispers now._

_“Brother?” she says, her perfect features losing composure for the first time. She places her hands on either side of his aged face, his hair and beard white as the clouds above, the wrinkles of decades making him nearly unrecognizable. Tears leak from his rheumy eyes as he stares at her in wonder, and those she knows despite the years now held within them. “It_ is _you,” she says in awe. “Oh, Charles.”_

*******

Dean doesn't leave the room or his bed for days. Someone brings meals twice a day and leaves them outside the cottage, knocking several times to alert him that it's there. The first day he leaves them be, but by the eve of the second his hunger is greater than his sorrow. No one tries to enter, not even Charlie, and he's grateful even as he feels guilty for leaving all his normal work to them.

Dean is in the third day of his self-imposed exile, staring out the small window, chewing the last of the apple tart Missouri sent with his dinner. He's been doing so while he eats each day, watching for the dragon in the distance, observing its movements. He cannot reconcile the creature he sees with the Castiel he knows, the soft lips and bright eyes that haunt his dreams. He thinks he may be going mad.

 _I have to leave_ , he thinks. _Somehow, I have to find the way back to Concordia._

Night, he decides, is the time to do it. This night. He can't bear to wait any longer.

Dean packs a few sets of clothing by rolling them into a linen shirt and tying it up by the sleeves, then creeps out of the cottage and heads towards the castle. When he reaches the kitchen he pauses outside the entrance for several minutes, listening carefully for anyone's presence inside. Once he's satisfied that it's empty, he tiptoes his way into the room and unrolls his makeshift knapsack, stuffing it with anything that will travel well: a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, several apples. He finds an empty wineskin and sets it aside as he rerolls everything into the linen shirt, then takes it outside to fill it from the rain barrel in the yard. Lastly, he helps himself to some rope from the stables, tying a length of it to his pack so he can sling it over his head with the wineskin, freeing his arms in case he needs to climb.

The horses are fidgety as he works, knowing that something is up, and when he's finished he goes to the far stall first. Gabriel bumps Dean's shoulder with his nose as if to wish him luck, but Samandriel lowers her head to brush against his face, as if to ask him to stay, and he whispers that he's sorry as he strokes her. Impala gives him a baleful look and stamps the floor of the stall with one hoof.

"I can't take you with me," he says, and Impala huffs through his nostrils. "I'm sorry, but I don't know what I'll run into out there. I won't put you in danger." He puts up a hand, asking to say goodbye, and after a few beats Impala relents and shoves his nose into Dean's palm. "Farewell, friends."

He leaves the stables with a heavy but determined heart, walking away with the castle at his back, wondering if Storm has gone to his roost yet to slumber. He pauses, glancing behind him. He searches the sky, too, but it's empty of everything but a smattering of stars, no witness to his defection into the unknown but distant pinpricks of light. He knows it will be treacherous trying to navigate the forest in the night, but in the morning the dragon will wake, and escape will be impossible. He just needs to get far enough away from the castle and find a place to hide until morning, when it's safer to travel, and now is his best chance. 

He thinks about the circle of white stones, the ring that surrounds the orchards and pastures like a fence made of rumor and superstition alone. The last time he dared to pass beyond the stones it didn’t take the dragon long to retrieve him, and he doesn’t know what will happen this time: if the dragon will sleep as he escapes, or if an unseen enchantment will alert it to Dean’s trespass. The memory of how the dragon had swooped down on him as a child slows his steps as he finally gets close enough to see the first stone.

Dean walks slowly up to the nearest one, placing his hand atop it and taking a deep breath. He glances behind him once more, the silhouette of the castle pitch black against the star-spattered sky, at the heart of it a dragon that he thought was his friend.

_I am the dragon, but the dragon is not me._

Dean shuts his eyes against the memory, then passes beyond the stones.

Nothing happens. He takes another step, and then another, several feet beyond them before he turns back. 

He means to look up at the castle, but his night-adjusted eyes catch on something else, and he walks back to the stone to run his fingers across its face. 

_Frank Devereaux._

He moves to the next stone, and then the next, and the next. 

_Sarah Blake. Krissy Chambers. Charles. Gavin MacLeod. Brady. Ellie Grant._

He'd tried to count them, once, trailing along the edge of the apple orchard one summer’s day, but when he reached a hundred he'd given it up as futile. There must be hundreds upon hundreds of them, each with a soft swell of earth before it, stretching back across the centuries. He backs away towards the forest, his eyes moving down the line of stones, a never ending march of silent soldiers. A barricade of the dead. 

He feels the dread of it settle into his bones.

"This will never be me," he says to himself, just as a loud shriek echoes across the sky, and he realizes he’s lost the advantage he planned to have. He turns from the gravestones and dashes for the treeline several feet away, crashing into the foliage without heed.

The woods themselves are a blanket of darkness, where even the weak starlight doesn't penetrate. He trips over a root and tumbles down a slope, taking a moment to catch his breath and make sure he hasn't damaged his limbs before the dragon's cry rends the air again. He blinks his eyes, trying to adjust as he feels his way through the dark forest, putting as much distance as he can between the castle and himself. 

Even from the castle he could never see beyond the forest, only the concentric rings of his life in the Shadowlands encircled by the trees. He steels himself as he moves in the dark, knowing that there must be an end to the forest somewhere, and praying that he can find it before the dragon finds him. 

Suddenly a light flares up in the distance, and he throws his arms up to shield his face from the shock of brightness. It's far off, but even so he can feel the heat, and he peers over his arms to see what it is.

Fire. 

Yards ahead, but even so the trees in the distance are alight with fervid flame, and he backs up a few steps until his back hits solid bark, hands clutching to hold himself up.

Storm is searching for him, setting the forest ablaze to cut off his escape. 

"Why?" He screams at the sky, unable to prevent his foolishness before he thinks better of it. He starts moving in a different direction, trying to skirt around the flames, and thinks he might succeed when he hears an awful sound behind him. He turns in time to see another section of the woods go up in flames, and he tries to move even more swiftly, the fire giving enough ambient light to help him on his way. He tries not to think what will happen if Storm decides to burn the very area he's in, tries not to think about being murdered by his best friend. 

_I am the dragon, but the dragon is not me._

Another section of forest goes up, and though it's not remotely close to where he is he can feel the heat nonetheless. He can no longer tell what direction he originally came from, and he can’t make out the tall spires of the castle from the forest floor. Maybe he can climb a tree to get his bearings, but right now fire is cutting off his escape on three sides and he has no choice but to keep moving in a single direction. 

Sweat is pooling on his brow as he picks his way forward, trying to be quiet now, trying not to let his frightened shaking make him lose his footing. Suddenly there's a break in the trees, and he does stumble forward in surprise before looking up at the large spot of sky through the forest canopy. He’s found his way to a clearing about forty yards wide in a rough circle, and he looks around, wondering if he should skirt the edge for safety or choose the quickest path to the other side. 

He chooses swiftness over stealth, and just as he tenses to make a run for it the stars are blotted out entirely, and a dark shape drops into the meadow in front of him, smoke pouring from its nostrils and its eyes bright with blue fire.

Dean freezes in place as he and the dragon regard one another, and he realizes: he's been herded right to this very spot.

Storm stretches its wings as it extends its neck out, sniffing at him, but this time Dean doesn't flinch or pass out in fear. 

"Why bring me to this place? Why not just burn me alive in there?" he says defiantly, hands clenching into fists at his sides. "Is that what happened to all the people buried under those stones? Did you kill them for trying to escape?"

The dragon rears back a little, tilting its head at Dean as if considering that statement, and Dean takes his chance and tries to run before a jet of flame cuts him off. 

"Just get it over with!" he screams at Storm, closing his eyes to brace for what's coming, but instead he hears the dragon give a plaintive cry and opens his eyes. Its eyes are still burning bright, blue like alcohol aflame, but even so Dean notices something he never thought he'd see.

"Are you crying?" he asks in surprise, taking a step forward without thinking. Storm shies away, and it gives him pause. "Castiel? Are you in there? Can you-- can you hear me?" 

_I am the dragon, but the dragon is not me._

Storm only stares at him for a moment, then takes a step back as though it pains it to do so. Dean holds his breath, staying as still as possible, and the dragon takes another step back, the difficulty of it as visible as though it were treading through mud. It pants with effort, smoke pouring from its nostrils, then turns away from Dean and makes a screeching sound as it folds its wings against its back. He doesn’t know what magic has bound Castiel to this creature, by what means they are linked to one another, but it seems as though Castiel is fighting for control. 

Dean waits, every muscle in him tense, and when several minutes go by with no movement he finally takes a deep breath and runs for the opposite treeline, legs pumping hard, forcing himself to keep his eyes on the forest and not look behind him. Storm screams in agony, and Dean stumbles in surprise and nearly falls, arms flailing wildly as he regains his balance. With every pounding footfall he expects to feel fire upon his back, but he reaches the other side without incident, diving into the foliage headfirst and landing hard on the forest floor, rolling onto his back to catch his breath.

The dragon seems to have given up its chase, and Dean rests his hands on his chest, willing himself to calm. He sits up carefully, feeling around to make sure he doesn’t slap himself in the face with a branch, but there’s nothing there.

He puts his hands out a little further, feeling around for the bushes he knows he jumped through, but his fingers don’t brush up against anything. Frowning, he puts his hands down to push himself upright, and is shocked at the sensation beneath his fingers.

It’s firm, like he would expect the ground to be, but also gives slightly beneath his palm like rising dough. It’s smooth, too, nothing at all like one would expect dirt to feel. He gets up on his knees, running his hands all along the surface beneath him for a rock, a root, even a fistful of dirt, but there’s nothing. He looks around desperately at the vast, yawning emptiness, a never ending stretch of utter blackness, but his eyes don’t seem to be acclimating to his surroundings. 

It’s with growing horror that Dean realizes that’s because there aren’t any. 

“Where am I?” he says aloud, and it seems to bounce back to him, echoing off walls that aren’t even there. He flails about in desperate terror, trying to find something to cling to, a direction to move in, but only emptiness is there for him. He shuts his eyes, trying to get his bearings, listening for something, anything, to focus on.

Faintly he can hear the call of the dragon, but instead of fleeing from it he clings to it like a lifeline, crawling on hands and knees towards the sound. He’s rewarded for his effort when it gets louder, and he blinks his eyes open and squints. In the distance, a portion of the darkness shimmers, faintly, and beyond it he can hear the cry of Storm. He gets into a low crouch, moving as fast as he dares with one hand stretched out before him, and eventually his hand makes contact with something strange: a wall, solid and yet pliable, like a vertical body of water. This must be a barrier to whatever place he’s found himself in, masquerading as a part of the forest, and in his haste for safety he’d crossed over without realizing it. 

_Maybe Storm has killed me, and this is the true afterlife._

He takes a deep breath and presses, feeling his hand pass through the barrier into what feels like air on the other side, and without further hesitation he leaps through it.

He tumbles to the ground, curling his fingers gratefully in the dirt, clouds of it blowing away under his lips as he breathes hard. He can feel the tremor of the earth below his hands as Storm moves close to him, can hear the sound of its snuffling breath as he sits up, looking in the direction of the great emptiness he found himself in. It looks just like more trees, but now that he knows to look he can see the faintest shimmer in the air, the way the sky sometimes looks in the distance on a hot summer day.

"There’s nowhere for me to go, is there?" Dean asks, defeat overriding his fear. "Even if Castiel wanted me to be free, there’s no way out of here. Wherever this place is, it’s at the center of this...nothingness." The dragon's head moves in an approximation of a nod, and Dean hides his face in his hands. 

"I just want to go home," he says, and Storm makes a plaintive sound, nudging at his hands like one of the horses. Dean sighs in defeat, looking at the dragon carefully. 

"Will you take me back to the castle?" It’s out of his mouth before he considers what he’s asking, but he’s tired, so tired. In answer Storm lowers its massive body to the ground, and after a moment’s hesitation Dean manages to clamber onto its back. 

He closes his eyes as the dragon leaps into the air, and as they climb he wonders briefly if it would be easier for him to just let go, let his body tumble to the ground with all his hopes and just be finished.

Storm lands in the pasture before he can decide, and he slides off without a word, feeling its eyes on his back as he walks away towards the cottages. 

*******

"I don't want you here."

Dean had suddenly found himself wide awake in the midst of the night, just before his dreams turned to fire again, and felt a presence in the room. He stubbornly kept his back to it, facing the wall. He knew it wasn’t Charlie.

"I thought you deserved an explanation.”

“It took over a week for you to come to that conclusion.”

Dean has spent the entire time moving around in a listless fog, going through the actions of the day more out of habit than intent. Charlie has tried to engage him in conversation every single day, but he just shakes his head each time. He’s not ready to talk about it. He may never be.

“I’m sorry. I thought-- I thought you would come back, seeking answers. It’s...difficult for me to be here.”

“Because you’re tethered to a dragon?”

Cas doesn't answer right away, and Dean is about to tell him to leave, to go and never come back, when he finally whispers a single, strangled word.

“Yes.”

Dean turns onto his back, but still doesn’t look in the direction of his visitor.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

“I didn’t want you to be afraid," Castiel whispers. “When you went away the first time, I thought it was what I deserved. That it was inevitable. I thought you had figured it out.”

“I thought you were a ghost.”

“Close enough.”

“What then?”

“I suppose you could say that I’m a dream. A dream that the dragon has, of a time that it was human.”

Now Dean looks at him, opening his mouth to ask something, then closing it again when he can see how insubstantial Castiel is. He seems to be leaning against the wall, but even in the dark Dean can discern the pattern of the stones through his torso. Cas looks down at himself when he realizes Dean is staring, then sadly meets his gaze.

“Like I said, it’s difficult. If you would come back into the castle, I could…” 

“No.” 

Castiel looks away, and Dean stares at the outline of his lips, barely able to believe they’re not really there.

"You used to ask me to tell you stories at night, especially when you first arrived,” Castiel finally says in a choked voice. “Do you remember?"

_Once, long ago, there was an entire clan of mountain dragons._

"I always used to fall asleep listening to your voice," Dean muses, staring back at the ceiling. "I thought they were just stories from your childhood."

"They were.”

_He curled up in a ball deep in their cave and went to sleep, waiting for someone to come and find him._

“How long ago was that?” Dean whispers, counting twenty breaths before Castiel answers.

“Millenia,” he whispers. “Centuries upon centuries.” Dean closes his eyes.

_Years passed, and eventually he turned to stone._

“Have you always been alone?” His voice is thick with sorrow, and he swallows around the lump in his throat.

“No. And...yes.” Castiel is silent again for some time, but Dean can’t bring himself to speak. “I always thought that someday I would tell you the truth, but no matter how much time passed it always seemed like a day in the distant future to come." 

_I am the dragon, but the dragon is not me._

"My father told me that long ago the humans hunted dragons to extinction."

Cas takes a deep, shuddering breath. 

"I always thought...I thought that they _left_ me. That something about me was broken, and that they left me to die.”

Dean’s heart softens and cracks at the same time as Castiel drops all pretense. His fear and resentment are replaced by the desire to comfort, to take Castiel in his arms and hold him, along with the sad realization that he can’t. Not like this. 

Dean clears his throat, sitting up in the bed, embracing his bent knees and resting his chin on them. "What do you mean, the dragon was once human?" he asks, though he thinks he already knows.

"The Lady,” Castiel answers bleakly. “She and the dragon are bound to one another. Magic that was old, even though back then she was so very young. They were trapped here together, but she was determined to return to her homeland. Your homeland. Concordia, when it was new.” 

“You knew it. You always knew. You bastard.”

“Yes. More than that. I’ve been there.”

“What?” Dean sits up sharply. “When? How?” 

“She managed to create a portal that would allow her to leave this place, but the dragon could not pass through it. She had vowed never to leave it alone again, but her desire to return to her family was just as strong. So she transformed the dragon into a human, so they could leave together.”

“Were you--” Dean swallows, hurt suddenly replacing his anger. “Were you lovers?”

Dean hates himself for the relief he feels when Cas shakes his head.

“I was still a child then, even as a dragon, and became an age appropriate human.” He gestures down at himself. “Dragons age roughly a hundred years for each human one. I don’t know exactly how I look now, but I can certainly see how my body has changed, and that the floor is farther away than it used to be.”

“None of this makes sense. Are you real or not?”

Cas looks at Dean with an intensity he can feel, and for a moment he solidifies in the center of the room. Dean thinks dumbly of the night they met. 

_“How did you do that?”_

_“Magic.”_

The spell is broken when Cas looks away, turning translucent once again before he answers.

“I’m not real. I suppose I never can be. I’m just the last spark of humanity that the dragon only remembers in the depths of its sleeping mind. I am a part of it, always, but when it wakes I no longer exist.” 

_I am the dragon, but the dragon is not me._

“How did it happen? Why did you leave Concordia?”

When Castiel finally answers, Dean hears the words of his own father.

“People always fear what they don’t understand.”


	7. Chapter 7

_For many decades Concordia has been peaceful, and King Charles beloved by the people, but with Princess Amara’s return, so too return whispers and deceit. There is great speculation about the unchanged features of her face, undimmed by the passage of sixty years despite the wizened visage of her twin brother. Rumors of dark magic swirl through the court and the villages, as well as mistrust at her motive for returning now, after so many years._

_“If her magic is so great, why does she not make the king as young as she is?”_

_“Does she plan to wait for his death, and then ascend to the throne herself?”_

_“She has designs for her strange child to become king, perhaps.”_

_Amara hears none of these whispers, focusing instead on time spent with her brother, who is really quite ill._

_“Let me heal you,” she whispers at his bedside, holding his withered hand between both of her own._

_“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I have lived a long time, and one life is enough for any man. I am grateful to see you again before I depart, but depart I must.”_

_“I worked tirelessly to return to you,” she says, tears choking her throat. “I did not feel the passage of time as you have.” He removes his hand, reaching up to pat her cheek._

_“How came you to be like this?”_

_Amara looks to the child sitting before the great oriel window in the king’s room, dappled sunlight glinting off his dark hair as he looks out into the courtyard, hands splayed against the sill as he stares in fascination at the people milling about below._

_“Do you remember anything about that day?”_

_He closes his eyes, hands clutching at the bedcovers. “It is the most vivid memory I carry, more so than even the birth of my own children. I see it in my dreams, still, and yet I’m not sure what part of it was real.” He opens his eyes, gazing at her. “It looked like a beast of old had appeared in the sky and pulled you from the rushing water, and then you both disappeared in a flash of light. What spell did you do, sister, that led to this?”_

_“I do not know. I could feel the magic in my veins crying out before I lost consciousness. When I woke I was in a strange place, face to face with a dragon.”_

_“I knew it,” he says on an exhale. ““All these years. I thought I had gone mad, after the flood, seeing what I saw. I never told anyone, for fear of what they would say about me. About you. But still, rumor persists.” He shakes his head, rubbing at his eyes. “I always knew your magic was powerful, though wild and unpredictable at times. Now I fear they will say it comes from a place of darkness to keep you in this unnatural state, that you have made a terrible bargain.” His voice is tired, his demeanor defeated._

_“No, do not be. The dragon that saved me was merely a child, and with that act we were bound together. Its life force sustains me, and I age as it ages. The time that passed for you was nothing to a dragon.”_

_“It sounds like a curse.”_

_“No, only ancient magic.”_

_“They say that if you should ever return so too would the shadow, and the storm. If you are bound to one another, where is this dragon now? If it appears in their midst, all of Concordia will be in terror.”_

_“No, they won’t,” Amara whispers, looking in the direction of the young boy at the window, “for it is already among you. There is no cause to fear.”_

_Charles follows her gaze in puzzlement, and then understanding dawns on his face._

_“No,” he whispers. “It cannot be.”_

_The boy turns, piercing them both with his unnatural eyes, flashing in the sunlight._

_“I will not hurt you,” he says firmly._

_In the corridor, the king’s eldest son backs away from the door in horror._

*******

In the morning Castiel is gone, and Dean knows in his heart that he won’t come back. 

At night he dreams of kissing Castiel only to find himself engulfed in fire, screaming into the night as he fights into wakefulness, hands shaking as he runs them through his hair. He finds himself in the kitchens earlier and earlier each morning, not wanting to close his eyes again in the darkness, half hoping that Castiel will sense his presence and return to him. Hard truths have not diminished his longing, and he almost hates himself for the way he craves that presence.

Several weeks pass before Missouri finally has enough. She puts her hands on her hips, giving him a level stare as he sits at the prep table, plucking chickens for dinner, and he can't meet her eyes.

"You better start talking about it or I'll start drugging your food every night so I can make sure you get a full night's rest." She sits across from him, leaning into her folded arms on the table and raising an eyebrow. “You know full well how much belladonna I have growing out in my herb garden, don’t make me use it.”

“There’s an inch of snow on the ground, Missouri, nothing is growing in your herb garden.”

“You just keep testing me, boy, if you want to see how well I can dry and store plants.”

He opens his mouth to sass her back but the words don’t come, tears springing to the corners of his eyes instead, and he puts his head on his folded arms in frustration. “You wait here,” she says, her tone softer, and he doesn’t move when she gets up from the table.

Dean thinks he must have dozed off a little, because with a start he realizes that Charlie is sitting next to him, carefully plucking a chicken, and Missouri is setting a mug of warm apple cider at his elbow. 

“This one isn’t drugged,” she says. “But if you don’t tell Charlie here what’s wrong with you, she’ll help me hold you down for the next one.”

He stares at her as she walks away, eyeing the mug of cider mistrustfully, though he does go back to plucking chickens. Charlie doesn’t say anything, but she leans into him, the warm length of her body against his a silent prompt to begin.

And so he does.

He finds it easier to speak if he keeps his focus on the task in front of him, and once he starts he finds he cannot stop until the story is told and his eyes are no longer dry.

Charlie sits still for a long time after he finishes, and he's surprised to realize that the plucked chickens have been cleared away, and Missouri and her helpers are too busy to pay attention to them, far from where they’re sitting. 

Charlie takes one of his hands in both of her own, peering at him until he finally meets her gaze.

"I know you feel trapped by situation and circumstances, but Dean: you have to make a choice. I’m sure this is not what any of us wanted for our lives, but at least we're not alone, and neither are you. You need to figure out if you want the rest of your life here to be focused on your misery, or look around you at all the things you do have, and make the best of it." 

“But what do I do about…” He hears Storm shriek in the distance, and he closes his eyes for a moment, breathing deep. 

“ _Is_ there anything you can do about it?” she says, and he blinks at her. 

“What are you saying?”

She releases his hand, turning to sit cross-legged on the bench sideways so she can face him. “You’re not responsible for his plight. In fact, maybe you’re the first person in a long time to lessen it. Imagine all the years when he had no one, terrified to show himself, maybe desperately wanting to. He’s probably watched every single white stone that circles us put in place. Lifetimes all alone, until he finally put his trust in a frightened child who couldn't possibly harm him." 

Dean lets her words run through his mind all day, and for the first time in weeks he finds himself watching Storm cross the sky as he goes about his daily tasks, but he can’t seem to follow them up with action.

*******

Dean turns nineteen in the midst of the winter, and he moves into a small hut that Benny and Victor helped build for him at the edge of the other dwellings. It’s a simple construction with a single room, and a small frame that Bobby built him for the mattress they bring from his own cottage. Dean sits on his bed with his back against the wall on the first night, watching the fire, and accepts that this is where he will spend the rest of his life, all alone.

It's late in the spring when Rufus dies suddenly, breaking off from yelling at Marv one afternoon to clutch at his heart and crumple to the ground. Dean is only a few feet away when it happens, but there's nothing he can do except hold Rufus's hand while screaming for help. By the time Bobby and Jody get there, Rufus is gone.

Dean has gotten used to death over the years with the chickens and goats and pigs, but he's so stricken by Rufus's sudden departure that Jody has to pry his hand away.

He doesn't speak for the rest of the day, watching silently as Victor and Benny dig a grave in line with the others, out past the peach orchard. Ellen and Millie sew Rufus into a shroud, the cloth made from the wool of the sheep he’d tended all his life. At twilight he is carried to his resting place on a litter, everyone silent and somber as the freshly turned earth, the blooming trees unsuitable for the solemnity of the occasion. Each person takes a turn speaking about Rufus, and it’s clear from the stories they tell that he was a cantankerous old bastard, and they all loved him dearly. It’s well after dark when the company break, each heading to their own dwelling, but Dean feels Charlie’s hand slip into his as they walk.

“Do you want me to come stay with you?” 

He shakes his head. “No, really. I’ll be fine.” She looks at him for a beat before throwing her arms around him, knocking him back a step despite her small size. He huffs before wrapping his own arms around her, squeezing her tightly and pressing a kiss into her hair before she lets go.

He is lying in bed, desperately waiting for sleep to come, when he hears the rush of beating wings. He sits up, peering out through a crevice in the stone wall, just able to make out a dark shape in the distance and a pair of eyes, burning blue. 

“Castiel, is that you?” he murmurs to himself, but then the shape huffs, a plume of smoke leaving its nostrils, and Dean shakes his head. “Storm, then.” He’s grateful for the protection of the hut, little as it is, and he holds his breath as the dragon sits back on its haunches, wings furled at its back, and after a minute it curls up on the ground in a ball. “What are you doing out there?”

He watches, frozen to the spot, as the dragon settles and its breathing evens out, and once he realizes it’s asleep he knows what will happen next. He takes a deep breath when Cas begins to appear in the room, his naked form lying on the floor, faintly at first but solidifying with each passing moment. Dean feels a thrum in his veins at the sight of him before he respectfully tears his gaze away.

“Hello, Dean,” he finally hears, and only then does he face him.

Castiel is sitting cross legged with his back against the opposite wall, as far away from Dean as he can manage, looking as real and alive as he did when Dean kissed him. “Hey, Cas,” he says in a choked voice. He gestures in the direction of the dragon with his head. “How’d you manage that?”

Cas looks down at his hands, clasped together in his lap. 

“Sometimes I can exert influence over it, but not always. And it’s...dangerous, to be vulnerable out in the open.”

Dean suspects there’s a story there, too, but Cas speaks again before he can ask. "I'm sorry about your friend."

"Rufus." 

"Rufus." Castiel gazes down at his hands in his lap. "I know you liked him, even though he tried to make himself unlikable."

"And how would you know?"

"I always listened when you talked. Especially to the things you didn’t say."

A heavy silence hangs between them before Dean can bring himself to speak again.

"I've been thinking all day that there's nothing here for me but to end up just like Rufus, buried under a stone in a strange place far from my homeland. Because the only alternative is the great yawning emptiness at the edge of the forest. It’s just a matter of deciding if I want that end to come now, or much later." Castiel's hands clench into fists, but he doesn’t say anything. “Charlie would be very angry with me if she knew how much I wanted it to be now.”

“I think everyone would be angry with you.”

“Even you?”

“Of course me.”

“Why?”

“Dean.”

“Why me, Cas? After so much time spent here, never speaking to anyone, never letting them see what you are, why me?”

Cas doesn’t speak for several minutes, and when he finally looks up at Dean his eyes are shining. 

“You were so innocent, so trusting. So...fearless.”

“So naive.”

“Yes.” Cas nods his head in agreement. “But naivety in a child is a virtue, not a weakness.” 

They look at one another over the span of the room, the dragon’s dream and the lost prince, and Dean finally sighs.

"I’ve decided that there’s only one acceptable choice for me to make." Castiel sits, looking resigned and lost and helpless, as though he already knows he can’t talk Dean out of the decision he’s made. 

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For being what I am."

"You can't help that." Cas nods, but keeps his head down, as if he's just bracing himself for the next disappointment. "I miss you, Cas."

“I miss you, too, Dean. I wish things could be different.”

“Well, they aren’t.”

“I know. I only came to give you my condolences, that’s all. I’ll leave you alone, now.”

"No." Castiel shivers, drawing his knees up to his chest. “Come here.”

“What?” 

Dean lies down on his side, patting the empty space next to him on the mattress.

“I said come here.”

*******

“How do you do that?” Castiel whispers hours later as they cling to each other in the dark. 

“Do what?”

“Make me feel...alive.”

*******

Summer edges out spring, turning the nights warm and vaguely uncomfortable. It doesn’t prevent Dean from wanting Castiel close to him, their skin touching, their breath shared, trying to make the most of a few fragile hours before the dawn comes.

Dean starts going to the castle each night, knowing that having Storm sleeping beside his cottage is bound to raise questions, and Castiel agrees.

“Besides,” he says, “it’s difficult to persuade Storm to sleep in a vulnerable location all the time.”

Dean finds a passageway through the dungeons, knowledge long dormant in his mind and unknown to everyone else. Superstition is enough to keep them away, but he bars it behind himself each night when he enters. It’s a vast improvement over crawling through the tiny passageway through the barrier, even if it involves two more sets of stairs than he would like. 

“How is this possible?” Dean asks one night, breathless and sated, running his fingertips over Castiel’s clavicle, dipping into the shadow at the hollow of his throat. He’s so focused on his task that it takes some time before he realizes no answer is forthcoming, and he leans back to stare at Castiel’s profile. “What’s wrong?”

“I told you once that you make me real, do you remember?” He is running his fingers idly along Dean’s back, a featherlight touch skimming along the skin of his spine, dancing affection. Dean nods. “What if none of this is real?”

Dean flattens his hand on the stomach beneath it, running his palm over its softness, moving across a sharp hip bone and along a muscled thigh before cupping the spent member between those legs. 

“It feels pretty real to me, Cas.” He grins at the sharp intake of breath, at the way Castiel arches beneath him, but then he drags his hand back to his stomach. “It must be real for you to be here with me now, like a dream made into flesh and bone. Why can’t you always stay like this?”

Castiel is waiting for him every night when he arrives in the room where they first met, but every morning that follows Dean opens his eyes to an empty room. He begins to fantasize about what it would be like to wake next to his lover each morning, to kiss him awake, to see him in the sunlight.

“It’s not a choice, Dean,” Cas says sadly. 

“But you must have some control over it,” he starts, but Castiel pushes him gently away, getting up to sit on the edge of the bed. “What are you doing? Don’t leave.” 

“If I could control it, don’t you think I would be here with you, always? Don’t you think I would have done something, long ago, to allow myself to live among those who come here?” Cas shakes his head and Dean reaches out to touch him, but his fingers meet nothing and he realizes the day is beginning to dawn beyond the window.

“Cas…”

“Amara made me human for a time, and that humanity couldn’t be extinguished when I resumed my true form.” He shakes his head, and Dean can see that he’s blurring at the edges now.. “But it’s not what I am, not really, and the people I encountered made sure I knew it.”

“What do you mean?”

Castiel turns, looking at Dean over his shoulder, the flash of his eyes no longer a mystery, though it still startles to see them burning blue in the semi-darkness as the rest of him disappears, just as his words reach Dean’s ears.

"I already told you. People fear the things they don't understand.”


	8. Chapter 8

_The boy is awakened by cold iron against his wrists, the press of sharp steel at his throat, and the feral grin of a guard as he is attacked in his bed in the middle of the night._

_“They tell me you’re really a dragon, little boy, but I have to say I don’t see it.” He makes a tutting sound, and the boy has difficulty drawing breath with the weight of the man sitting on his chest. “Prince Michael has ordered me to execute you for the safety of the kingdom. Your connection to the king’s sister makes her unholy, and getting rid of you will set her free.” He caresses the boy’s cheek with the flat of his knife. “I don’t see why we can’t have a little fun, first. Why don’t you show me how a dragon screams?” The knife flashes, and he gasps as he feels his skin separate at the gash, keenly aware of the blood pooling in the wound until it drips._

_“Why are you doing this?”_

_“Why not?” the guard says with a shrug, and the knife moves again, and again, and again. The boy clenches his teeth together, hands balling into fists, trying not to think about the blood as it flows. “Why don’t you scream, boy?”_

_“Is that what you want?” he grinds out, and the guard smiles sickly._

_“Indulge me.”_

_He opens his mouth, and the guard’s smile widens a fraction, but is then replaced with sheer terror as the tiny form of the boy beneath him shrieks with the full force of the dragon within. He jumps from the bed, scrabbling backwards with his heels, watching in horror as the child he’d come to kill transforms before him into a creature long passed into myth and legend._

_The dragon turns to face him as he cowers on the floor, its eyes burning with bright blue fire, and this time it is the guard who does the screaming._

*******

**__** _King Charles does not have much time left, and Amara has been spending many a night at his bedside rather than in the bedroom that she shares with the boy. She does not realize how much of her focus has been drawn away from her charge until she hears the shriek of the dragon from the opposite side of the corridor, and she startles in alarm._

_“Go,” Charles whispers, and she runs._

_The corridor is uncharacteristically empty, for even at this hour of night there are usually two guards posted outside the king’s chambers. Her sense of dread increases when she finds the door to her room locked, but she presses against it with her mind so forcefully that it breaks off the very hinges. As she runs up the stairs into the room she can see that half of it is engulfed in flames, a twisted corpse burning at the center. On the other side of the room is a broken bed with blood-splattered linens, and beyond that is Storm._

_She crosses the room, placing her hands on its neck, and it flinches from her touch at first._

_“It’s all right,” she says, closing her eyes to concentrate as she reconstructs what happened, shuddering at the revelation. She reaches out further, searching for the outcome of what’s happened here, and finally opens her eyes in sorrow._

_“You cannot stay here,” she says._

_Storm makes a noise of dissent, but she shakes her head._

_“They will hunt you, as they have all of your kind. You have to go back to the Shadowlands, my friend. It is all that remains of your realm, the last remaining sanctuary.”_

_She turns to look back to the staircase, at the percussive stampede of feet heading their way in haste._

_Storm makes a plaintive noise, and Amara nods. “The pull to it is within you. You just have to follow it, as you did the day you saved me.” She presses her hand over the scales that cover its heart, leaning in. “I promise I will not leave you there alone.”_

_She steps away, and Storm’s eyes flash before it leaps through the window, shattering the wall in its wake. Part of the roof collapses as the first of the guards ascend the stairs, shielding their eyes from the flames and the bright flash of light as a great beast disappears in the sky._

*******

“I’m happy for you, you know,” Charlie says at the end of another day, as they sit on their rock in the pasture eating blackberries, their lips and fingers stained with juice. “You have someone there for you now, when nightmares chase your sleep away.”

“You have them, too?” he asks, thinking of his own dreams filled with screaming, of flames rising up in the darkness. 

She nods. “Something restricts my movement and I’m in pain, but no one can hear me screaming for help. I’ve never been able to piece together what it is. I think that’s the same for all of us.”

“All of us?” 

She shrugs, returning to the linen cloth of blackberries and taking her time to choose one. “Everyone here has nightmares, it must be an entry requirement.”

“How do you know so much about everyone’s business? I’ve lived here most of my life and I don’t know as much about everyone as you do.”

“Because you take people at face value, and you accept them as the person they want you to see. You don’t pry, or ask uncomfortable questions.”

He shakes his head, facing forward again. “I know about Bobby’s, because I lived in his cottage for so long. There’s a man who scares him, though he mostly dreams about his fists.” He glances sidelong at her. “Don’t tell him I told you that.”

She nods. “Garth doesn’t really keep his a secret, he’ll tell anyone who asks that he dreams of wolf packs howling while he’s lost in the forest. Donna sits up suddenly in her sleep sometimes, feeling like she’s fallen from a great height.”

“How do you know that?” he says, bumping against her shoulder, but she elbows him in the ribs. 

“Sometimes a lady needs cuddles.”

She turns her gaze to the sky again, staring at Storm as if pondering its fate. “It seems like the dragon is the only being here that has pleasant visitations in its sleep, dreaming itself alive, with a human that loves him.”

_Are you real?_

_You make me real._

“What if none of this is real?” Dean whispers. “What if this is some kind of afterlife?”

She looks thoughtful, musing over what he’s said. 

“If that’s true, then this…is a terrible Heaven.”

*******

“I’ve been thinking,” Dean says much later that night, curled up with Castiel in the nest they’ve made of bedrolls and ancient curtains, shaken free of dust.

“Should I be alarmed?”

“Cas.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, turning on his side and propping on an elbow. “You’ve been thinking about what?”

“It’s a little strange.”

“Are you putting that in the proper context? Because…” he gestures at himself, and Dean pushes at his shoulder. “Okay, I’m listening.”

“I think that you know more about this place than you’ve told me.” Castiel’s whole body tenses, and his eyes widen slightly. “And I think that you want to tell me, but you don’t know how.”

He turns to look at the ceiling above them, waiting for Castiel to turn everything over in his mind, determined not to push. 

“I’m afraid,” Castiel finally whispers. “Afraid of what you’ll think of me when you know the truth.”

“I don’t know why, considering how well I’ve dealt with discovering your secrets in the past.”

“I can’t believe you’re making a joke right now.”

“Yes, you can.”

Castiel sighs. “Yes, I can.”

“Cas, I know I haven’t handled revelations well in the past, but I was surprised by all of them. I’m ready now. I want you to talk, and I want to listen.” Castiel breathes heavily, but Dean just waits, and eventually he senses Castiel’s resignation.

“What do you believe?”

“That all of us were sent here as punishment, for one reason or another.” 

Castiel shakes his head. “This isn’t a prison, Dean. It’s a sanctuary.”

“How?”

“Storm turned to stone, and humanity moved on, carving itself a castle into the very mountain where it slept. I don’t know for sure because there are no dragons left to tell me, but I think this place was preserved, apart from the world, protecting me as I slumbered.” He’s sitting up now, his back to Dean as he stares out into the sky of the world he made. 

“And when things went badly, you came back. How long were you human?”

“A year, I think.” 

“Why didn’t Amara return with you?”

Castiel runs a hand through his hair. “She did not want to leave her brother without saying goodbye; but he learned what had happened and insisted she bring him with her.” He looks over his shoulder at Dean. “She created this replica of the castle for him, drawing on her magic to duplicate what it had been when they left.” 

“Including the ruined room that you escaped from,” Dean whispered. “But all the rooms are empty, save this one. Did she do that for him?” 

Cas nods. “She cared for him every day, in this very room. And when he died, he was the first to be buried beneath the white stones.” 

Dean thinks about the day he ran, of the stones he first realized were graves when he read the names upon them.

_Charles._

“Afterward, Amara was consumed by guilt. Not just about his death, but all the others who died during the Great Deluge, when she alone had been saved. She felt as though there must be a greater purpose for her, and I encouraged her to seek it.”

“So you were left alone.”

“She wanted to take me with her, but I knew that my hold on my human form would always be tenuous; if we were ever separated, or if I were in danger, I would revert back to my true self.” 

_I am the dragon, but the dragon is not me._

Cas looks back out into the night, at the deep purple of the sky dotted with stars, like the gown Amara wore the night she sent Dean to this place. 

“Was it lonely?” 

“Not always. Our bond is still there. We can’t speak through it, but I can _feel_ her, can sense her intent.” He pauses, clearing his throat. “That’s how I know the truth. Why all of you are here.” 

“Are we dead?” Dean asks in whispered dread, relieved when Cas shakes his head, but only for a moment.

“No. But you all should be.”

“I don’t understand.”

Castiel turns to face him, but Dean takes note of the careful distance he keeps between them. “Give me someone’s name. Anyone here.” 

“Charlie.”

“Of course, Charlie. Amara found her in the twisted wreckage of a coach at the bottom of a ravine, pinned inside amongst the bodies of the dead, but trapped in such a way that she couldn’t get out.”

_Something restricts my movement and I’m in pain, but no one can hear me screaming for help._

“Bobby.” 

Castiel grimaces. “His father had beaten his mother to death, and Amara was nearly too late to save him from the same fate.”

_There’s a man who scares him, though he mostly dreams about his fists._

Dean can barely bring himself to continue, but he chokes out another name. “Garth?”

“He was set upon by wolves outside of his village, and when Amara got to him he was bleeding out into the snow.” Castiel meets his eyes, his own sad and his voice toneless as he continues. “Jody was thrown from a horse in the forest all alone, and Donna fell from the cliffside. Rufus should have died long, long ago, because he was stealing from a rich merchant who had no qualms about killing him slowly for the trespass, even though he was only doing so to help his village through a harsh winter. Missouri was burning at the stake for witchcraft because she has the Sight, though she doesn’t remember.”

“Why not just save them, then? Heal them and leave them be. Why send them here?”

“They were all _supposed_ to die. To save one person from their fate probably won’t disturb the balance of the universe. But hundreds upon hundreds? She wanted them to have another chance at the life that was no longer due to them, and so she sent them here, using our bond as a beacon that showed the way.”

“And their memories?”

Cas sighs. “The first people were traumatized by what they remembered, and so desperate to escape that they often went beyond the barrier, never to be seen again.” 

“That place.” Just the thought of it makes him shudder. “It’s so-- empty. Getting lost in it must be a fate worse than death.” He sits up slowly, but maintains his distance. “Why did you let me go that night?”

“Dean,” Cas says in a strangled voice. “It was so, _so_ hard. I can’t exert control over Storm, not really. Every instinct in me was fighting against it. I’ve long tried to protect the humans here, and then it was _you_ and I…”

“Hey, hey,” he says, finally venturing to touch Cas’s knee. “I’m here. It’s okay now.”

Cas takes a few breaths before he nods. “It proved more effective to give everyone a clean slate, and let superstition take root in their minds, passed down over time from one to another. You were the first to try to escape in a century. It took everything I had to leave you in the hay and not take you back to the castle and shield you after that.”

“That would have probably caused some alarm.” 

“How are you so calm? I keep expecting it to be too much, for you to leave for good this time.”

“I think I’ve passed the point of being shocked. But Cas, why do I still have my memories? ”

“That’s the one question for which I have no answer, and cannot even sense. Perhaps she felt that it would be even more traumatizing because of your age, and that you had so few memories that you would eventually forget over time.”

“You say we’re not dead,” Dean whispers. “But it still feels like we are.”

“You only think that because you remember.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Everyone here feels the same sense of loss that I do, an emptiness that can’t be filled, and not knowing what belongs there they can never be content. Always yearning for something, but unable to seek it. Not being able to live the version of their lives that they want to, find someone to love, have children. They make the best of what they have in the absence of choice, but that’s not _life_ , Cas. Not really. That’s just...existing.”

Castiel is quiet for a long time. Dean studies his face, trying to follow his train of thought, but he’s wearing a mask of stoicism.

“I have an idea for how we can change things for everyone.”

“So tell me.”

“It will be easier to _show_ you. Will you come to the broken room tomorrow night instead?”

“You’re being very mysterious.” 

“I know. I’m sorry. Will you?”

Dean looks at him closely, curiosity burning within him, but relents. “Of course.”

Castiel leans in, cupping Dean’s face with both hands as he kisses him gently before pulling him back down into their makeshift bed. Castiel touches him with unrestrained reverence and purpose, and they make love languorously well into the night. 

It feels like asking for forgiveness. 

It’s not until much later that Dean realizes it was also meant to be goodbye.

*******

The following night Dean sees Castiel waiting for him just outside the door, the flickering light of the torch he holds revealing his features but not his emotions. He beckons for Dean to follow as he enters the room.

"I don't understand," Dean whispers, watching the torchlight play over the walls as they ascend the steps, bouncing off damp stones. "Why are we here?"

Castiel stands with his back to Dean, raising the torch above his head to illuminate the sleeping form in the room. Dean’s eyes are drawn to it despite his will, watching the movement of its body as it breathes in, hearing the rasp of air through its nostrils on the exhale. "Amara’s nephew wanted me killed because he thought it would sever the bond between us, do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“That part...was correct.”

“So?”

Castiel turns to face him and it all clicks, the pieces rapidly falling into place.

"No. Whatever you're thinking, the answer is no."

"I can't go on like this, Dean." Castiel says, and his eyes glisten in the torchlight. "How do you think I feel knowing that you're trapped here? Knowing that, given a choice, you would be leading a completely different life? One where you could make your own choices about where you live, what you do, who you..." He wipes at the burgeoning tears with the heel of his palm. "Who you love."

"Cas, you know that I..."

"No. I don't. I don't know anything when you've never had a _choice_ , Dean."

They stare at one another, breathing hard, and Dean backs away.

"You can’t ask this of me.”

"You can break the enchantment completely. You can free _everyone_." Castiel takes a shuddering breath, then holds something out to Dean. “This place exists separate from the world to protect the last living dragon. If the dragon is no more, then the barrier around it will crumble. Everyone will be free. I couldn't bring myself to let you do it before, but now I know it needs to be done. I'm ready." He lifts his hand higher, and the torch illuminates the object in Cas's other hand, glinting off the blade pointed towards him, holding the handle out for Dean to grasp.

"No." He bats it away, and Castiel drops his torch to the floor where it sputters but continues to burn, casting a sickening shadow on the walls. "You can't be serious."

“Two thousand years, Dean. That’s how how long I've been trapped here. How long Amara has wandered her homeland, living in the shadows. You can't imagine the loneliness, even bonded as we are."

"But I'm here now, Cas! You don't have to be lonely anymore."

" _Dean_. In the span of your lifetime I will not age, but I will have to watch you grow old and infirm. I will only ever able to be with you for a few brief hours each night, and in those I will watch you wither and die before my eyes. It will pass for me like a _moment_ , Dean. Then I will be alone again, with thousands of years still before me to mourn you. " He holds the dagger out again, his jaw determined and his eyes pleading. "When I said it would free everyone, I also meant _me."_

He moves closer to Dean, who backs away, realizing almost too late that he’s nearly collided with Storm. Castiel looks at the sleeping form of his true self, flipping the dagger in his hand to grasp the hilt instead.

“I am the last dragon. I will forever be bound to this shielded enclave of my homeland.” He turns his gaze to Dean, burning brightly now with blue fire, undisguised. “But the dragon has a human heart, and it loves _you_. It wants you to be free, Dean, even if it can’t follow.”

Dean shakes his head frantically. “Cas, we have time, we can talk about this, we can wait…”

“No. Time will only weaken my determination.”

“Do it yourself if you’re so eager to die!” He says it in anger, realizing his mistake too late when resolve crosses Castiel’s face. “Cas, don’t…”

But the thrust is made, the knife plunged between two scales at the side of the sleeping dragon’s chest, and Castiel has only a moment to look back at Dean before he disappears as Storm wakes with a shriek.

“No!” Dean screams as Storm vaults upright, thrashing about as it howls in pain before its legs give out and it collapses on its side with a crash. Dean falls to his knees beside it, looking in horror at the blood leaving quickly, too quickly, around the buried blade. “Why did you do that?” The dragon makes a plaintive noise, and Dean collapses on its neck in grief.

He doesn’t register the flash in the room around him, his eyes shut tight, listening to Storm’s pained breathing as it whimpers beneath him. 

“What have you done?” says a voice that Dean remembers despite the passage of time, and when he turns he sees the lady in her deep black gown, dotted with a universe of swirling stars.

“Help him, please,” he says in a strangled voice. 

She moves with an eerie grace to Dean’s side. “I cannot,” she says sadly. “The bond between us is broken, as was his wish. He took his own life, and I cannot interfere with free will.”

“What do you mean?” he screams. “You sent everyone here against their free will.”

She kneels beside him, caressing Storm’s face with her hand, and it huffs into her palm with a low sound. “Everyone I brought here begged for salvation as they died.”

“I didn’t.” 

“No, you didn’t. You simply asked me if you could come.”

_“Can you send me now?”_

_“Is that what you want?”_

“No,” he sobs. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

“I would have brought you anyway, child. You would have died there, in a fire, but your request only made it so that you needn’t suffer first, and could retain your past.”

Dean isn’t listening to her anymore, instead cradling the dragon’s head in his lap, caressing it as he tries to hold back tears.

“Castiel, please. Please come back to me. Don’t leave me here without you.”

“What did you call him?” Amara whispers, but Dean just clings to the dragon, unable to speak. He ignores Amara, ignores everything in the room, only squeezing his eyes shut as he feels Storm’s chest rise and fall beneath him, slower, and slower, knowing it won’t be long until it stills altogether. 

“I love you,” he whispers as the dragon breathes its last.

The air around them begins to hum, and Dean can feel a charge in it like a prelude to lightning in a storm. He doesn’t have time to wonder at that when he notices Amara, clutching at a silver charm around her neck, the air swirling about her and lifting the tendrils of her hair. 

“What are you doing?”

She opens her eyes, and Dean gasps at the power raging within them. “Magic,” she whispers, before throwing her arms to the sides as a force ripples off her, pressing against him and everything else in the room. He brings an arm up to shield his face, pressing himself into the body of the dragon, as the room is infused with a strange glow, the very stones of the room humming with power. He blinks his eyes, trying to see what’s happening, and gasps as he sees a ghostly figure standing at the far side of the room.

“Cas,” he whispers, but he can still feel the dragon taking labored breaths under his palm. 

Dean stands slowly, carefully, taking measured steps towards the form that is staring at its own solidifying hands in awe.

“Cas?” he says in shock, reaching out to grasp his shoulder, and it is so firm and warm beneath his hands that he pulls it into his embrace. Even as he holds Cas, warm and alive, the dragon on the floor stirs, rising to its feet, uninjured and whole. “What is this?” 

“Choice,” Amara says, and as the power in the room dissipates, Dean clutches Cas tightly as if he’ll disappear again. “I am sorry, Castiel. I made you human because I did not wish to leave you alone here. I never realized it had become a part of you that could never be erased.” She cups his face, giving him a soft smile. “I took you to my world, but you were never at ease there, were you? You felt the pull to return to here, to your true form, and so you lost your hold over it when you were threatened.” She shakes her head. “I blame myself, for I thought only of my brother then. My love for him eclipsed my care for you, and so you could never embrace your humanity.” She rests her gaze solely on Dean. “Now it is your human heart that always feels the pull towards something. Someone. And so that is the thread from which your new form is woven.” She crosses the room, and Storm lowers its head into her caress. “You are no longer the dragon, Castiel. You are your own.”

“But how?” 

Amara smiles sadly as she strokes Storm’s neck. “My life was once saved by tying it to another lifeforce, and you broke it.”

“I’m sorry,” Castiel says, but Amara gives him a soft look.

“Do not be. I shall live out my life now as I was meant to. It will be a relief to finally be a part of humanity, instead of an outsider. And to show them how to accept the things they don’t understand.” She pats Storm’s thick hide before pressing her face into its side. “It is time for all of us to face our fears, my friend. As I live, so shall you, now.” The dragon kneels before her, and she climbs onto its back with unfailing grace.

“But where will you go?”

She looks down at them with a raised brow.

“Anywhere. Everywhere.” She pats Storm’s neck. “All the boundaries are broken now, and our choices are our own.”

The dragon stretches its wings as Amara leans into its neck, turning to launch itself from the from room as it has for centuries. Only this time, it won’t return. 

Dean watches them go, a dark shape blotting out a portion of the night sky, getting smaller and smaller until it disappears altogether, the warmth of Castiel’s hand never leaving his. 

*******

They lie in Dean’s cottage in the disappearing dark, clinging to one another. Not until the sun is well above the horizon, and Castiel is still whole and real in his arms, does Dean truly believe.

“How do you feel?” he finally ventures to ask.

“I’m not sure,” Cas says, resting a hand on his chest, to assure himself of his human heart. “It’s as though a huge a part of me is missing, yet at the same time I feel strangely...whole.” 

“Dean! Come see the...” Charlie yells as she launches herself into the cottage, only to pull up short and stare in shock at the two figures that sit upright in alarm. “Oh! I’m sorry, I um…” She stares for a moment, then smiles. “You must be Castiel.”

“Charlie, what…”

“Just come see.” She darts back outside before Dean can ask anything else.

“Come see what?” Dean asks as they exit the cottage, but it’s apparent soon enough. The castle that once dominated the landscape is gone, and he grips Castiel’s hand tightly as they approach. The kitchen and the other outbuildings are all intact, but any part of the castle proper has crumbled into a heap at their feet and arranged itself into an orderly pile of stone. 

“No one heard it happen,” Charlie says as they get closer. “What’s more, no one has seen Storm.” She levels a look at Castiel, but he stares back at her without flinching. “We think it’s dead, buried here beneath the stones.”

“A cairn for the last dragon,” Cas whispers.

“What makes you say that?” Dean asks Charlie, though he glances at Cas.

“Because,” she continues, pointing to an assembled crowd at the edge of the outer bailey. “Look!”

They approach carefully, and Dean sees several unfamiliar horses first. 

“What, did some new animals appear?”

“Not just animals! Several men, too, but they didn’t arrive the way I did, the way any of us did. They just rode into the bailey early this morning, asking how we all came to be here.” She grabs Dean’s arm in excitement. “Outsiders, just riding in as they please. Do you know what this means? It means we’re free!”

Dean manages to find Bobby standing at the edge of the assembled crowd, and he joins him in peering at the newcomers, who are dressed in finery that he hasn’t seen the like of since he was a boy.

“Do you know where they come from?” Dean leans in to whisper to him, and when Bobby glances over his shoulder he looks first at Castiel, then at their clasped hands. 

“I suspect you’ll fill me in on that story later,” Bobby says, before turning back to the group of strangers. “They say they’re a hunting party from the nearby kingdom, and they were surprised to come upon us. Apparently they’ve long hunted in this area, and there’s never been anything here before. They were quite shocked this morning to find an entire village where there used to be nothing but meadow.” He crosses his arms, looking at where the castle used to stand, then towards Castiel. “I suspect whatever enchantment kept this place hidden has been broken.” Castiel merely nods, once, and Bobby turns away from him, seemingly satisfied. “I don’t know much else, so you should go talk to one of them. Why don’t you leave your...friend...here with me and go investigate.”

Cas squeezes Dean’s hand once before he lets go. 

“Be nice,” Dean says to Bobby, who shrugs. Dean eyes him warily before approaching the group, all of whom are engaged in conversation except one man, who seems to hang back from the rest. 

“Excuse me,” Dean says, and as the man turns Dean can see that he’s really still more of a boy, a few years younger than himself, though nearly as tall. “Can you tell me where you come from?”

The boy opens his mouth to answer, but then his eyes fall to the amulet hanging from Dean’s neck. “Where...where did you get that?” he sputters, pointing to the pendant, and Dean clutches it defensively as he backs up a step. The man shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry, they told us none of you know where you came from. Don’t be alarmed. It’s just, I _know_ that amulet. May I see it?”

“How do you know it? My father gave it to me, long ago.” Dean takes a tentative step forward, holding the pendant between his fingers in invitation. “I’m not like the others,” he says at the curious glance the stranger gives him before he grasps the piece and studies it. “I remember my home.”

“And where was that?” the stranger says in a choked voice, dropping the amulet and staring into Dean’s face. Something about him seems familiar, though Dean knows they’ve never met before. 

“Concordia,” he whispers, hope fluttering within him. “Do you know it?” 

“How long have you been here?”

Dean swallows, looking down at his feet. “A long time. I was five when I arrived here.” His head whips up at the stranger’s shocked gasp.

“Dean?” he says. “Are you Prince Dean?”

“Yes,” he whispers, and suddenly finds himself wrapped in the stranger’s embrace. 

“All this time,” the boy says, gripping Dean tightly despite his youth. “They said you were dead.” He pulls back, cupping Dean’s face in his hands. “They said you were _dead_.”

“Who are you?”

“Highness!” one of the other men calls. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” he calls over his shoulder. “We have found my brother!”

“ _Sam_?” 

*******

After two days Charlie comes to Dean in tears, throwing her arms about his waist.

“We used to hide behind a tapestry in the corridor where your family apartments were, on the third story,” she says in a choked voice. “It had a hole close to the bottom, and we could spy on the guards and all the servants milling about.” He embraces her, stroking her hair. “It’s fuzzy, but I remember bits and pieces.” 

And so they all begin to, as the last of the enchantment around them dissolves. Dean is filled with dread, waiting for the buried traumas that still creep into their nightmares to also come back, but it hasn’t yet happened. He silently thanks Amara for that mercy, since it will probably be shock enough for those that return home to find out they’re thought dead.

So far, however, not many have chosen to leave. 

“I’ve been here most of my life,” Millie says to him. “It’s strange to remember having ever lived in another place, or having known any other people.” It’s a sentiment echoed by Missouri and Bobby and many others, who seem content to continue to live out their lives here. It doesn’t surprise Dean that Garth and Bess choose to leave, as does Charlie, and he expects Donna will go with her. He wonders if any of them will return, if they don’t find what they’re looking for. 

Sam spends most of the week after his arrival close by Dean’s side, and they slowly get to know one another. 

“The night you disappeared, there was a fire in our apartments,” Sam explains. “Mother immediately came into our room while Father tried to extinguish the flames. She grabbed me, but no one could find you. She always swore you’d been taken by the shadow.” Sam huffs. “It seems she was right. I always thought that was an old wives’ tale.”

_What’s an old wives?_

“Beware the shadow, and the storm,” Dean whispers. “What is the tale, exactly? I don’t think I ever heard it.”

“Probably not. Mother and Father never wanted to tell me, but I spent an enormous amount of time in the library once I’d learned to read properly. I read all about the origin of Concordia, about the Great Deluge and the First King, Charles. So many people know the story of how he became king, but no one bothers to read beyond that. Peace and prosperity don’t make for very good storytelling, I suppose.”

“I bet you read every word, though,” Dean guesses, and Sam blushes a little.

“He had a twin sister that was killed during the Great Deluge, and legend has it that at the end of his life she appeared to him, unchanged by the passing years, riding a dragon called Storm. They say she spirited him away into the shadows, and he was never seen again.” Sam shrugs. “That’s where the mantra comes from, though I doubt anyone even remembers the original story anymore. Besides, most of those tales only have but a kernel of truth in them, and the rest is fancy.”

“You know,” Dean says, looking into the stables where Castiel is petting Impala’s nose. “I think I _have_ heard that story after all.” Sam looks at him in puzzlement, but Dean changes the subject. “What else did you read about in the library?”

“It’s where I first found out about this.” He lifts the pendant that hangs around Dean’s neck, turning it back and forth in the sunlight before letting it drop. “I asked Father what happened to it. He looked so pained when he told me that you’d been wearing it when you were last seen, begged me not to mention it to Mother.” He clears his throat. “She died in childbirth the following winter. Father was never the same after that. The sweating sickness took him two years ago.” 

Dean nods, clenching his jaw. “I want to feel sorrow for them, for their passing before we were reunited, but it’s as though I’ve already mourned them.”

Sam nods, already too wise for his fifteen years after being a king for two. “They mourned you, too. They loved you, Dean.” They sit for a while, watching the simple life occuring around them. “You’re not coming back with me, are you?”

“No.”

Sam nods his head, as though it’s the answer he expected. “Why?”

Dean ponders for a moment, staring up at the Storm-less sky. “All the time I’ve been here, I felt trapped. Now that I can leave, it’s different. I’m glad to know you again, Sam, and I hope to know you better in time. But this is the life that I know, now, and these people are my family.”

“You’re the rightful king…” Sam starts, but Dean shakes his head.

“No. I know nothing about diplomacy or politics, I barely even remember how to read, Sam.” He holds out his hands, palms up, rough and hard with callouses. “These aren’t the hands of a soldier, or a king, and I’ve no desire to be either.”

Sam looks at him for a long time. When he speaks again, he has nothing of a king and everything of a teenage boy in his tone.

“Would you still be my brother?”

Dean throws an arm about Sam’s shoulders, pulling him close. “I’ll always be your brother. Nothing can take that away from us, now.”

*******

“Are you sure this is what you want?” Castiel asks several days later, as twilight begins to color the sky and they wave goodbye to their visitors. Dean lets his arm drop and sighs. 

“You said once that you couldn’t be sure of how I felt, because I never had a choice.” He watches as his brother turns back to look over his shoulder, once, before resuming his journey. “Now I’ve been given one.” He turns to Cas, cupping his face with one hand. “I choose you.”

“But we needn’t stay here, Dean. I could come with you.”

“I know, but that’s not all it is.” He nods after Sam’s retreating back in the distance, turning the family heirloom over in his fingers. Sam had insisted that he keep it. “I’m glad to know what became of my family, but I don’t know them anymore. Perhaps I will, in time. It seems we’re only half a day’s journey, now, and who knows what the future will bring?”

“I don’t want you to have regrets.”

“All my regrets are in the past, Castiel. I want to focus on the future, now.” Dean looks at Cas in the failing light, still amazed to find him real and alive. “Come on. Missouri made apple tarts today, and I think her newfound fondness for you means she put by a few extra.”

“I can’t believe how easily she accepts me. How they all accept me, after…” He squints. “Well, I’m not sure Benny accepts me. Or Bobby.” 

“Well, since Rufus died Bobby inherited the role of pretending not to like anyone. Benny’s just cautious about new people. Don’t you worry about him.”

“But he has all the _knives_ , Dean.”

“Yeah, and he’s probably sore that one of his best ones went missing around the same time as a certain dragon, naturally he’s going to be suspicious of you.”

“I can’t believe you’re making a joke about that.”

“Yes, you can.”

Cas looks sideways at him and sighs. “Yes, I suppose I can.”

Dean laughs, putting an arm around Castiel’s waist and pressing a kiss to his temple. “You have the rest of your natural, human life to get used to it.”


End file.
